FPC’s coverage of the prosecution of publishers Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin on charges related to Backpage.
On Saturday, August 29, the Los Angeles Press Club honored video journalist Paul Detrick of Reason magazine for his brilliant, 2019 documentary, The War on Backpage.com Is a War on Sex Workers, awarding it second place for best investigative journalism…
Ruling strictly on procedural grounds, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently dismissed a challenge to the federal government’s seizure of millions of dollars in assets belonging to longtime publishers and journalists Michael Lacey and Jim…
Libertarians have stones the size of Mount Rushmore when it comes to championing civil liberties, challenging police power and battling government overreach. Such subjects used to be the purview of true-blue liberals, but too often these days, social justice warrior-ing…
Over the objections of federal prosecutors, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Brnovich on Monday ordered a delay to the start of the Lacey/Larkin trial in Phoenix over concerns related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. With cases of COVID-19 surging daily…
Update, August 1, 2020: On July 28, the Ninth Circuit issued an order dispensing with the need for oral arguments in the case. It states: “The court is of the unanimous opinion that the facts and legal arguments are adequately…
In a May 19 filing at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, First Amendment attorney Robert Corn-Revere leaves federal prosecutors’ arguments in the Lacey/Larkin case looking like Steve Buschemi’s character in Fargo following his date with the wood chipper. In…
Federal prosecutors in the Lacey/Larkin case seem eager to prove the infamous boast once uttered in Errol Morris’ classic, 1988 documentary on the perversion of justice, The Thin Blue Line, that the true test of a prosecutor is being able to…
A fiery motion to dismiss filed in the Lacey/Larkin case on May 1 in federal court in Phoenix accuses the U.S. Department of Justice of “outrageous government misconduct,” claiming federal pettifoggers and government agents repeatedly trampled upon the defendants’ attorney-client…
On May 4 in Phoenix, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Brnovich nixed a defense motion to dismiss the indictment of veteran newspapermen Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, rejecting the motion’s argument that the prosecution had improperly charged the one-time alt-media…
On March 30, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dealt federal prosecutors yet another setback in the government’s two-year-long quest to hold onto millions of dollars in publishing assets belonging to veteran newspapermen Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, former owners…
