This post repurposes recent Twitter/X reports from the #BackpageTrial, now near its close in Phoenix’s Sandra Day O’Connor U.S. Courthouse. For regular updates, please follow the writer @stephenlemons. Friday, Oct. 27, 2023: Cambria at Bat This a.m. in the #BackpageTrial,…
On Tuesday, Sept. 12 in Phoenix’s federal court, Carl Ferrer, the government’s lead witness in the Backpage trial, followed the prosecution’s playbook to a T, testifying that nearly everything the classified listings site did in its 14-year history knowingly facilitated…
During opening arguments on Thursday in the Backpage trial in Phoenix, Michael Lacey’s attorney, Paul Cambria, rebutted allegations made by federal prosecutors that Lacey “facilitated” misdemeanor prostitution offenses because he once co-owned the classified listings site, Backpage.com. “Sex for money…
We are journalists, editors, artists, and public servants who support veteran newspaperman Michael Lacey in his First Amendment fight with the federal government. On July 31, 2023, Lacey’s longtime business partner, veteran newspaperman James Larkin, died tragically one week before…
In an order issued on Monday, July 24, federal Judge Diane Humetewa in Phoenix granted prosecutors significant wins on a series of motions affecting the retrial of veteran newspapermen Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, set to begin on Aug. 8….
With about a month to go before jury selection is set to begin in the retrial of veteran journalists Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, defense attorneys have filed a new motion arguing that a June 23 decision by the U.S….
The U.S. Department of Justice’s duplicity knows no bounds when it comes to the prosecution of veteran newspapermen Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin under the U.S. Travel Act, a Kennedy-era law intended to target organized crime. Case in point: the…
U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut combines the worst characteristics of Cotton Mather, Girolamo Savonarola and the Rev. Jerry Falwell — Senior, not Junior. The 76-year-old Democrat’s persistent, self-righteous efforts to censor the internet, using “the kids” as his rallying…
Granted, the Jonestown Massacre may not be the perfect metaphor for Washington Post scribe E.J. Graff’s recent review of California prosecutor Maggy Krell’s book, Taking Down Backpage. Still, the way Graff blindly glugs down Krell’s self-serving account of the latter’s…
Defense attorneys in the Lacey/Larkin trial fought like feral bobcats on Friday to block inflammatory testimony from a woman trafficked as a teen and advertised in adult ads posted by herself and pimps to the now-defunct classified-listings site, Backpage.com. Federal…
