 The biggest perpetrators of any of them were Backpage.com. We didn't cow-tow. We don't cow-tow. It is a crime that is rightly punishable by incarceration and prison. There are more slaves in the world today than ever before in human history. In April 2018, the founders of the online classifieds website Backpage.com, Michael Lacey and James Larkin, and five people who worked for them were indicted, though one of the employees has already pleaded guilty. Lacey and Larkin were accused of facilitating prostitution in violation of the Travel Act, money laundering, and conspiracy. It's hard to make us feel guilty. We're not guilty. We're not guilty. OK? You can't talk me into it. The irony was that Backpage had been working with the FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to help police investigate instances of sex trafficking, and the police had come to rely on its cooperation. In September 2021, federal judge Susan Bernovich was forced to declare a mistrial in the case. Lacey and Larkin's determination to fight all the way to the end is laying bare what reason has been reporting for years. The government's case against Backpage is a house of cards. All along, the big argument between federal prosecutors and the defense has been, you can't try us for sex trafficking because there are no sex trafficking charges. Elizabeth Nolan Brown is a senior editor at Reason Magazine. She's been covering the case against Backpage for years. These specific six defendants knew that their website was facilitating prostitution and conspired to encourage that. That's what the federal prosecutors are supposed to prove. In opening statements, the state took a different strategy. The federal prosecutor, Reggie Jones, who makes the opening statements, is just like, child sex trafficking, child sex trafficking, like just sort of harping on that. Not trying to tie anything that he's saying to any of the specific allegations or ads that are in the indictment against the defendants just really sort of making this case based on reputation and rumors. They told these stories of these mothers whose daughters were teens and had ads posted for them on Backpage. Allegedly, but I mean, again, this is not anything that they have evidence for in this case. It's just sort of these very emotional stories. After the opening statements, the Backpage defendants lawyers were like, hey, we want to mistrial. This is absurd. This is, you know, so prejudicial. So the judge, Susan Bernovich said, OK, you know, you're almost crossing a line to the federal prosecutors, but I'll let it stand as long as you just dial it back, dial it back a little. But prosecutors called witnesses who continued to focus on child sex trafficking and couldn't attest to the specific charges against the defendants. At one point, California special agent, Brian Fincher, showed the jury ads from Backpage. None of the ads actually said anything like, I will give you sex in exchange for money. So none of the ads actually contained the elements of the crime of prostitution in the state of California where they were posted. And in California, you can actually be a licensed escort. You can be a masseuse. You can give erotic massages. You can be a stripper. You can do, you know, erotic performances. There are all sorts of legal forms of sex work. Not only was there no evidence that the defendants actually knew about these specific ads, but there was no evidence that a legal activity sprung from these ads. In another instance, the jury heard from a doctor named Sharon Cooper who works with sex trafficking victims and often testifies in government cases. So she got it there and she testified to a lot of terms that are very common in sex work ads. Like 100% independent is a, you know, thing you would see a lot in escort ads online, which meant just not affiliated with an escort agency, an independent sex worker. And she got up there and said, no, that actually means that someone is trying to trick you into thinking that they're not a sex trafficking victim, but they actually are. And just again and again, she testified things like that, sort of making up these terms so that pretty much everything that you see adult consenting sex workers posting their ads, she redefined as a sign of sex trafficking, which, you know, involves force of fraud or corrosion or child sex trafficking. And eventually towards the end of her testimony, she said, you know, when the defense was questioning her, they asked her about sex work and she said, I don't use that term. I use the term sexual exploitation and sort of went on that vein, making clear that she does not actually think you can be a consenting sex worker, you know? So all of her testimony was very much conflating prostitution with sex trafficking and child abuse because she does not see a difference and she admitted that. After Cooper's testimony, the defense called for a mistrial again. The judge said she would review the transcripts and make a decision in the morning. So it was very surprising when she got in there the next morning and they all got in there and she said, yes, she actually was going to grant the mistrial because the government had crossed the line. The government had just been harping on sex trafficking, sex trafficking, sex trafficking and not tying it to defendants and that it just was way too prejudicial. Like it just gave the impression that a lot of things were happening on this site and that these defendants knew about them even though the government was not presenting any evidence that that was the case. Brown uncovered internal justice department memos from 2012 and 2013 in which prosecutors admitted the back page not only didn't facilitate sex trafficking, but it worked to help law enforcement ferret it out. These memos actually got brought up during the trial because during the opening statements and during some other statements that the prosecution made, they tried to say that back page did nothing to try and stop underage people advertising on their site or being advertised on their site, that back page did nothing to try and stop illegal prostitution from being advertised on their site. And these memos that Reason published a few years ago actually show that they did a lot. They're actually doing all of this stuff to rid their site of illegal content. And the prosecutors in these memos laid out just the great lengths that back page was going to in order to try and ferret out illegal content. They were obviously letting adult ads, letting sex worker ads go through, but they didn't want ads for children up there. They didn't want ads that blatantly advertised prostitution or anything like that. They didn't want anything that was illegal. And the prosecutors said, you know, they're better than any other site that's out there doing adult ads or doing classified ads, getting back to us about subpoenas at working with the National Center for Missing Exploited Children at doing all these things that try and bring an end to this stuff. The judge wouldn't allow the memos to be used as evidence in front of the jury because they were given to the defense by mistake and were an internal work product. I'm really glad that we were able at Reason to bring these memos to light because I think they're really important for people to see that while federal prosecutors and attorneys general were saying one thing in public, they were writing another thing privately that was very, very different. You don't have to pick new jurors. The trial might not get back underway until next year now. And the defense attorneys are pushing for a total dismissal of the charges now. Brown says that's unlikely, though a hearing to determine the next step in the case is scheduled for October 5th, 2021. Lacey and Larkin are determined to keep fighting no matter what it takes. We don't think it's the government's job to be telling us what to print, okay? And that's just like, it's not a starter. There's no discussion, you know? Not gonna happen.