Palfrey Case Goes to Jury

It was a brisk trial, unless, of course, you were one of the 13 former escorts or three former clients who testified to exchanging money for sex.

No, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) was not called to explain his sins. Harlan Ullman — Mr. Shock and Awe — and former State Department official Randall Tobias escaped "the hottest seat in town," as well. Not even the alleged madam, who has been aggressively public about her case in the year since her indictment, would hazard the witness chair.

Her lawyer, Preston Burton, opted to lay the big names aside, resting his case today without calling any witnesses. It's now left to the jury to decide whether Deborah Jeane Palfrey knew and encouraged her employees to engage in illegal sexual activity. U.S. District Judge James Robertson let the jurors out about an hour and a half ago.

In closing arguments, Burton played to the sympathies of the jury and, frankly, all of us who read about or watched the parade of former call girls, each betraying varying degrees of mortification and pique, take the stand during three days of trial. None appeared willingly.

"Those poor people all told you to a person that it was their choice" to have sex with their clients, Burton said. He asked the jury to "restore some dignity to the process" and acquit Palfrey, who ran Pamela Martin & Associates for 13 years, before shuttering the company in 2006 while under investigation.

"Some of them have clearly led hard lives and they deserve sympathy," Burton said. But he cautioned the jury not to "confuse that sympathy for where they are now with sympathy for where they were then when they decided to do what they did."

The trial deals with racketeering-related charges, and the government's challenge today was to boil them down for the jury. After nearly 45 minutes of jury instructions from Robertson, Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Butler told the jury that "the underlying facts are not that complicated."

He said that Palfrey, her employees and the clients knew that Pamela Martin & Associates was a "full service" company. Men expected sex for their $250, he said. "Not to disparage my whole gender," Butler said, "but most men want sex."

"There's no question prostitution was going on here," Butler said. The question is whether Palfrey knew about it, despite her defense. Palfrey "chose her words carefully" and created a hollow contract, forbidding her employees to engage in any illegal activity, as a way to claim "plausible deniability," Butler said.

Court documents show that Palfrey, in something akin to a company newsletter, warned her employees of prostitution stings and at one point told them to not wait for the 90 minutes to expire, but rather to end their dates once their "performance" was done.

Butler apologized to the jury for some of the more explicit testimony — he asked one witness about her menstrual cycle, to the chagrin of everyone present — but defended it. In a case that is fundamentally about sex, "you have to be explicit," Butler said.

We'll keep you updated on the jury deliberations.

Comments

[Taylor]

The gov't was rough on witnesses. So was Burton --the defense attorney. He specifically "called out" the type of STD one of the girls contracted. That was totally unecessary and obviously and attempt to humiliate and "break" her. Shame on Palfrey for forcing the government's hand this way. She should have gone down w/ a plea they offered her months ago. She's an idiot.