The following contains the analysis and opinions of the author and no one else. The author does not speak for the defendants.

On October 7, Reason magazine released its latest documentary on the Backpage.com case, “Classified: The War On Backpage.com,” which viewers can watch for free on the new streaming channel, CiVL.

The 42-minute film discusses recent events in the case and follows legendary journalist Michael Lacey to his Aug. 28 appearance before federal Judge Diane Humetewa, at which Humetewa sentenced Lacey, 76, to five years in prison and fined him $3 million for one guilty count of money laundering.

Lacey’s two co-defendants, former Village Voice Media executives Jed Brunst, 72 and Scott Spear, 73, were each sentenced to 10 years in prison on multiple counts.

On Sept. 11, the three men surrendered themselves to U.S. Marshals to begin serving their sentences. All three are appealing their convictions, arguing in part that their prosecutions violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech.

Frighteningly, Spear was recently denied vital medications in prison. The status of his health remains unclear.

As the award-winning documentary team of Elizabeth Nolan Brown and Paul Detrick recount in their film, the U.S. Government brought the Backpage prosecution in 2018, after the classified listings site endured years of vilification by cynical politicos, such as Vice President Kamala Harris, Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal and Sen. John McCain and his opioid-swiping wife, Cindy.

The case involves Backpage’s publishing of facially legal adult advertising — disfavored speech that the government sought to crush, despite a string of legal victories in federal and state courts that vindicated Backpage and found it to be operating within the law.

Ironically, as First Amendment attorney Robert Corn-Revere explains in the film, it may have been these victories that made Backpage a target.

“Backpage had been increasingly successful in its First Amendment litigation, and the political pressure to do something, anything, to make Backpage go away increased during that time,” Corn-Revere said.

Speaking of Lacey and Lacey’s longtime business partner, Jim Larkin, Corn-Revere added, “These are guys who did not back down from a fight.”

Driven to despair by a vindictive, years-long  prosecution, Larkin took his own life on July 31, 2023, just days before the start of the second Backpage trial. The first trial in 2021 ended in a mistrial after three days due to egregious prosecutorial misconduct.

In the documentary, Lacey described the loss of his friend of over 50 years, the man with whom he built a newspaper empire that stretched from coast to coast.

“I still catch myself before I’ve had coffee saying, `I gotta send this to Jim,'” Lacey told Brown. “Then I say, ‘Oh, fuck. No, I’m not sending anything to Jim.'”

Please also see:
Julian Assange’s First Speech Since His Release, Complete and Unabridged
and
#Backpage3 Defendant Scott Spear Denied Meds by Prison (w/Update)