Earlier this summer, Backpage.com founders James Larkin and Michael Lacey — facing trial in January on multiple counts of facilitating prostitution and money laundering — filed a demand with the Federal District Court in Phoenix, Arizona, to remove the judge in the case, Susan Brnovich.
On Wednesday of this week, according to documents accessible through the federal PACER court database, federal prosecutors are fighting back against the former Backpage bosses’ demand, accusing the pair of holding an obsolete view of women’s roles.
Backpage was seized and shut down by federal agents in April of 2018, and just days later Lacey, Larkin and other Backpage execs were slammed with a 93-count indictment accusing them of laundering cash they earned from allowing ads for prostitution, including for underage girls, on their site.
Judge Susan Brnovich, a former Maricopa County Superior Court judge who was nominated for the federal bench in 2018 by Donald Trump, was utimately assigned to the Backpage case. But in July, Lacey and Larkin through their lawyers accused Brnovich of bias against them because her husband — Arizona state Attorney General Mark Brnovich — has spoked out against “sex trafficking” and once published a pamphlet specifically naming Backpage as a platform for sex traffickers.
In their Wednesday filing, government prosecutors shot back, saying that “in the year 2020, it is anachronistic to suggest that a federal judge with 17 years of judicial experience is unable to preside impartially because of her husband's views,” according to the documents.
If Brnovich were forced to step down, she would the third judge to recuse from the Backpage case. The first judge on the case, Steve, P. Logan, stepped down reportedly without explanation. The second, Douglas L. Rayes, stepped down saying that he was personal friends with both the prosecutors and defense lawyers.
Brnovich took over as judge in the case in March of last year. Due to delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Lacey and Larkin’s trial was pushed back from August of 2020 to January of 2021.
Prosecutors in Wednesday’s filing also accuse Lacey and Larkin of suspicious timing with their recusal demand, saying they waited until they had already been on the receiving end of several “adverse rulings” before accusing Brnovich of “bias.”
"Incredibly, defendants ... claim they had no knowledge until last month about the widely reported fact that the court's husband has served as Arizona's AG since January 2015,” the prosecutors wrote, “and that the AG's Office (like the AGs of every jurisdiction in the United States since 2010) has, in the course of its official duties, informed the public of the dangers of human trafficking.”
Lacey and Larkin, and their lawyers, have yet to file a reply to the prosecutors’ claims.
Photo via Backpage.com website
