Back in April of this year, a judge acquitted ex-Backpage executives of 63 of the 84 counts levelled against Michael Lacey, Scott Spear, and John Brunst. Lacey is the former co-owner of the infamous website, Spear and Brunst were high level staff of the company.
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Hoping some of the remaining charges might still be level against the trio, with 20 years jail time to be handed down on each man, Federal Prosecutors in Arizona are pleading more to this case that began six years ago.
Some Backpage back history
Reading the history of this case as it is laid out here, since their 2018 arrests, both state and federal judges have seemed to have sided quite often with Backpage’s right to post adult-oriented ads. In most cases it comes down to prosecutors and existing law violating or coming up against Backpage’s right to free speech.
Citing vague language in the law, a publisher’s First Amendment protection over what a third-party might post in their ad, even a state law that was leveled at Backpage that itself violated the First Amendment’s scienter requirement (scienter just a fancy legal word for knowledge of wrongdoing) mostly what judges rule is that Backpage had no specific knowledge of the age of the person featured in adds they ran nor were they responsible for their content.
Surely a murky area, seeing as ignorance of the law can never be used as a way to circumvent it, and ‘responsibility’ often falls into a grey area, still Backpage has seen plenty of laws suits against them dismissed.
Sex trafficking?
Arguably it’s been the question of whether Backage was aiding and abetting sex trafficking that carried the heaviest sting to the many suits brought against the company, and across public perception of wrongdoing. But time and again judges have found that Backpage is not responsible in the way lawmakers and even private individuals (and a few have brought suit against Backpage) claim Backpage should be when it comes to this highly emotive issue.
Sex trafficking is just simply very difficult to level against third parties.
They haven’t made Harris happy
And as we have reported here, Kamala Harris went after Backpage when she was the AG in San Francisco. Stating in a press conference at the time that the site was “the world’s top online brothel,” her prosecution saw mixed results.
Still Backage is no more, some charges against the principals have stuck and it seems there might still be something Lacey, Spear, and Brunst could be charged with in the future.
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