Award-winning editor, journalist, and publisher Michael Lacey walked with a bit more swagger than usual on Monday as he exited the Sandra Day O’Connor U.S. Courthouse in downtown Phoenix. Lacey’s left leg was less encumbered, you see. On Monday, U.S….
Sometime in late March or early April could mark the beginning in Phoenix of the biggest First Amendment trial in the nation — the retrial of famed journalists and former Backpage.com owners, Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin. That is, if…
The rare moments of levity during the half-hour session at the Ninth Circuit on Sept. 2 in the Lacey/Larkin appeal came at the government’s expense as litigators jousted before a three-judge panel at the James R. Browning United States Courthouse…
Nearly a year since their first trial ended in a mistrial due to prosecutorial misconduct, storied newspapermen Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin head to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on September 2, arguing that a retrial would…
On Sunday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals tentatively scheduled oral arguments in the Lacey/Larkin case for Friday, September 2, nearly a year after prosecutorial misconduct caused a mistrial in the high-stakes First Amendment donnybrook. The hearing is one of…
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…
On April 6, 2018, the U.S. government set a disturbing precedent in the annals of modern censorship by arresting award-winning newspapermen Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin and taking down Backpage.com, a classified ads site that reportedly served almost 1,000 cities…
Anticipating a favorable ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court on a similar Mississippi statute, Republicans in Arizona’s state Senate recently passed a bill along party lines that would outlaw most abortions after 15 weeks, with no exception made for victims…
Knowing their case had gone drastically awry, in early September, government attorneys “goaded” the defense into successfully moving for a mistrial in the Lacey/Larkin case, part of a long pattern of prosecutorial misconduct. To protect the defendants from a violation…
In an eight-page order issued Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Diane Humetewa dismissed concerns by the defendants in the Lacey/Larkin case that her connections to the late Sen. John McCain and the McCain Institute might trigger her recusal due to…
