Court in the #LaceyLarkinTrial recessed 20 minutes ago. In the Last hour, after the jury had been dismissed for the day, a fight broke out between the prosecution and the defense with defense lawyer Whitney Bernstein who represents Jim Larkin bringing up the infamous DOJ memos 1/
These are DOJ memos from 2012 & 2013 which argued #Backpage should not be prosecuted in large part because Backpage was helpful to law-enforcement the in tracking down trafficked victims. The memos also discussed difficulty of determining the age of a female depicted in the ads2/
These memos are out in the public.@WIRED magazine first mentioned them in a 2019 article, and @ENBrown of @reason published the entirety of the memos shortly thereafter. 3/
The memos were inadvertently disclosed by the government during discovery. But a previous judge ruled that the memos are what attorneys consider “work product” & are excluded from trial. 4/
Bernstein argued that because the prosecution specifically discussed the operations of Backpage from 2010 to 2013 or so, this is the same time during which the DOJ did an intensive investigation of Backpage and produced these memos. 5/
Bernstein told the judge that memos are clearly exculpatory & contradict what the government says about Backpage’s business strategies being illegal. She argued that if the memos cannot come in, the depositions & other material involved shld, according to the Brady rule 6/
“Brady” refers to court precedent which states that the prosecution must turnover any exculpatory material to the defense. So even if the memos are “work product“ The underlying material is still covered by Brady 7/
It was a persuasive argument and seemed to catch the prosecution flat-footed. Prosecutor Andrew Stone claimed he could not respond “on the fly.” The judge seemed open to Bernstein‘s argument and said they would discuss it further tomorrow 8/
I discussed these memos recently in a piece for the online publication @SpliceToday: 9/ splicetoday.com/politics-and-m…
The bottom line is this: the DOJ knows that backpage was not in violation of the law. And yet the DOJ is prosecuting Lacey and Larkin anyway. It’s very dirty pool to keep these memos out. But this is how your government plays with the lives of innocent men and women 10/
They don’t want a fair fight. Before this Donnybrook broke out, a cop from California described how he put up a phony ad for a fictional sex worker on Backpage 11/
This resulted in unintentional comedy from the prosecution for whom this witness was testifying. The prosecutor had the cop read from some of the ads that he used for inspiration for his fake ad 12/
So you have this really, really square white dude on the stand reading language like this: “best lips in the city, baddest exotic freak, exotic Ebony,” and so on 13/
Put aside for the moment the fact that these ads apparently involve adults doing something of their free will. Who is scandalized by language like this these days? Have these puritanical stiffs never seen OnlyFans? 14/
More than anything this is beginning to resemble one of the obscenity trials from the 1980s. Why do we have the government telling us what we can read and what we cannot read, whether it’s on Backpage or any other website? 15/
A very good point Lacey’s attorney Cambria made in his argument before the jury: By eradicating Backpage from the Internet in 2018, the government stifled free expression and violated the #FirstAmendment to the U.S. Constitution 16/
And yet, IMHO, The various free-speech organizations in this country who are not stepping up to defend these veteran newspapermen are cowards in the face of grotesque government overreach. They should be ashamed. 17/
Back tomorrow morning with more from this ongoing travesty. I will have a summary of today’s events up later tonight or tomorrow a.m. on frontpageconfidential.com 18/18
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