All that was missing was the apple in his mouth. Defense attorneys Gary Lincenberg and Paul Cambria took turns roasting star prosecution witness Carl Ferrer on a legal spit during cross-examination at the Backpage trial on Wednesday in downtown Phoenix’s…
Paul Cambria, attorney for veteran newspaperman and Backpage defendant Michael Lacey, took the lead on Tuesday, cross-examining former Backpage owner and CEO Carl Ferrer, the government’s star witness. A longtime First Amendment advocate and former attorney for Hustler magazine publisher…
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…
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…
On Friday, at the final pretrial hearing in the Backpage case, federal Judge Diane Humetewa in Phoenix shot down a defense suggestion that the prosecution not use the terms “sex trafficking” and “child sex trafficking” during the Aug. 29 trial…
During a marathon six-hour pre-trial hearing in Phoenix’s federal court on Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Diane Humetewa ruled that the defense in the Backpage case can argue the adult-themed ads that appeared on the classified listings site were, in…
See judge’s order, here: Journalists Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin tell a federal judge that they do not oppose severing their retrial in Phoenix from four co-defendants, with some caveats, while prosecutors oppose the idea. Responding to a recent inquiry…
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…
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…
