The following opinion piece reflects the views of the author and no one else. It was dusk on Thursday, Nov. 16 as the five Backpage defendants and their attorneys filed out of the steel-and-glass doors of the Sandra Day O’Connor…
This post repurposes recent Twitter/X reports from the #BackpageTrial in Phoenix’s Sandra Day O’Connor U.S. Courthouse. For regular updates, please follow the writer @stephenlemons. Nothing to See Here, Move Along At the Backpage trial in federal court in Phoenix, a…
Note: Some of the following content was repurposed from live reports from the courthouse. For regular updates during breaks in the proceedings, follow @stephenlemons on Twitter/X. The defense in the Backpage trial called its first witness on Tuesday in Phoenix’s…
All that was missing was the apple in his mouth. Defense attorneys Gary Lincenberg and Paul Cambria took turns roasting prosecution witness Carl Ferrer on a legal spit during cross-examination at the Backpage trial on Wednesday in downtown Phoenix’s Sandra…
After a half-day of trial on Friday, Sept. 15 in Phoenix, wherein federal proecutors made numerous references to children and child sex trafficking in the Backpage case, Joy Bertrand, attorney for Joye Vaught, a former Backpage employee, renewed the defense’s…
In a motion filed Thursday in federal court in Phoenix, government attorneys have — for the second time — asked federal Judge Diane Humetewa to exclude any mention of the First Amendment in front of the jury during the Backpage…
On Oct. 5 in Phoenix, federal Judge Susan Brnovich set a new date for round two of the Scopes Monkey Trial of the 21st Century: i.e., the DOJ’s railroading of veteran newspapermen Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin, onetime owners of…
Update 9/07/2021: Monday night, the defense filed a Motion for Acquittal and Mistrial, arguing that the prosecution’s disingenuous, inaccurate and needlessly pornographic opening statement on Sep. 3 was so riddled with error that the jury has been “irretrievably tainted” by…
