FPC’s coverage of the prosecution of publishers Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin on charges related to Backpage.
As journalists and publishers with more than 40 years of experience in the business of news, we firmly believe our prosecution represents epic government overreach and an unprecedented assault on the First Amendment and freedom of speech. On April 6,…
As American servicemen die abroad attempting to shepherd vulnerable men, women and children to the land of freedom, agents of the U.S. government are trying their slithery best to subvert any discussion of our supreme civil liberty — the First…
In a motion filed Tuesday in federal court in Phoenix, the government asserts that attorneys for Village Voice Media (VVM), the 17-paper alt-media chain once co-owned by veteran newsmen Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, advised VVM that the Craigslist-inspired classified…
On Friday in federal court in Phoenix, defense attorney Paul Cambria came ready to rumble. It was the last pre-trial conference before the U.S. Government’s railroading of storied newspapermen Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin picks up steam on day one of trial,…
Update Aug. 17, 2021: On the same day as Judge Brnovich’s order below, Bruce Feder, attorney for one of Lacey and Larkin’s co-defendants, Scott Spear, entered a “response and opposition to court order accelerating trial.” Feder explains on the record…
The mendacity of the federal government’s prosecution of award-winning journalists Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin knows no bounds. With less than a month before Lacey and Larkin’s Aug. 23 trial on allegations that they facilitated prostitution due to their former…
During a June 7 status conference in Phoenix’s federal court in the Lacey/Larkin case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Rapp, the lead attorney for the government, made an assertion nearly as absurd as the poofy, Liberace-style hairdo that he regularly sports….
Federal prosecutors have failed, for now, in their most repugnant smear tactic to date in the case involving veteran journalists and onetime Backpage.com owners, Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin. In a ruling issued May 7 from Phoenix’s federal court, Judge…
In a four-page ruling issued on April 5, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected a defense petition that the court order federal Judge Susan Brnovich’s recusal from the Lacey/Larkin case. Attorneys for award-winning newspaperman…
A game of legal ping pong has ensued in the Lacey/Larkin case, with U.S. District Court Judge Susan Brnovich shooting down a defense subpoena seeking the same docs from her husband, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, as a public records…
