THE FOLLOWING REPRESENTS THE OPINIONS OF THE AUTHOR AND NO ONE ELSE. On Wednesday in Phoenix’s federal court, U.S. District Court Judge Diane Humetewa rescheduled a sentencing hearing for veteran newspaperman Michael Lacey and two others in the Backpage case,…
In a brief status conference on Monday morning in federal court in Phoenix, U.S. District Court Judge Diane Humetewa scheduled August 6 as the start date for the retrial of journalist Michael Lacey on 84 hung counts from last year’s…
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,…
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…
Note: For regular updates during breaks in the proceedings, follow @stephenlemons on Twitter/X, search for #BackpageTrial. The worst part of sitting through the testimony in the Backpage trial is waiting for the prosecution to “pass” the witness to the attorneys…
You may remember the passage from George Orwell’s novel 1984, in which protagonist Winston Smith’s torturer tells him, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” This quote came to mind…
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…
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…
