A jury found defendant Jermaine Lamon Roy guilty of one count of sex trafficking by use of force, fraud, or coercion. Roy presented a motion before the Court, moving for a new trial on the grounds that the Court erred in certain evidentiary rulings and that the prosecutors engaged in misconduct.

Before trial, the government moved to exclude evidence of the victim’s sexual behavior under Rule 412(a), which provides that evidence intended to prove that the victim engaged in other sexual behavior or to prove a victim's sexual predisposition is not admissible in a civil or criminal proceeding involving alleged sexual misconduct. At the trial, the defense agreed “that evidence offered to prove that L.S. engaged in prostitution before or after the time period charged… is generally inadmissible pursuant to Rule 412.” The only argument made by Roy at that time was that he should be permitted to offer evidence of L.S.'s sexual behavior, including acts of prostitution, during the time charged in the indictment. The government agreed with that argument, and Roy was not prohibited from introducing evidence pertaining to the victim’s sexual behavior and acts of prostitution during the time encompassed by the indictment. After the jury entered its verdict of guilty, Roy contended that the Court's ruling on the government's motion to exclude the evidence was in error, and that in this case the pertinent evidence fell under one of the exemptions to Rule 412, as set out in Rule 412(b)(c): “evidence whose exclusion would violate the defendant's constitutional rights”. Roy argued that the exclusion of this evidence violated his constitutional rights. However, the Court held that this argument was incorrect, and that the evidence was inadmissible. The Court referred to United States v. Cephus to illustrate its arguments in this regard (see http://www.unodc.org/cld/case-law-doc/traffickingpersonscrimetype/usa/2012/united_states_v._justin_p._cephus_et_al.html?tmpl=old for our case summary of the Cephus case). The Court explained that in a case involving allegations of sexual misconduct, evidence offered to prove that a victim engaged in other sexual behavior is inadmissible.  If admissible, such evidence would deter many victims of sexual abuse from testifying (i.e. the prostitutes working for Cephus were engaged in a criminal activity, but they were also his victims). Specifically the defendants in Cephus wanted to cross-examine one of the adult call girls about her having worked as a prostitute before he recruited her. They wanted to suggest that having already been a prostitute she would not have been deceived by Cephus and therefore her testimony that she was coerced into working for him should be disbelieved. In that case, the Court resolved that the testimony sought to be extracted by the cross-examination would have been irrelevant. Even if no promises were made to the victim, this would not be evidence that she consented to being beaten and to receiving no share of the fees paid by the johns she serviced. Similarly, in this case the Court held that Roy's constitutional right to present a defense had not been impaired, because that right did not extend to the introduction of irrelevant evidence. The evidence that Roy wanted to offer is precisely the kind of evidence that Rule 412 excludes, and its exclusion did not violate Roy's constitutional rights.

Roy further questioned the exclusion of a videotape that his defense had proposed to show during trial. The videotape showed L.S. and Roy engaged in a sex act. Defense counsel argued that the videotape would give rise to the inference that L.S. willingly engaged in prostitution, as it showed how while they were engaged in the act, a customer called on L.S.’s cell phone and she answered against Roy’s wishes. The Court did not allow Roy's lawyers to show the videotape to the jury but did allow them to show it to L.S., out of the presence of the jury, and then question her about it in the presence of the jury. In front of the jury, L.S. admitted to the facts that defense counsel wished to prove through the use of the videotape: she admitted that she and Roy were together, that the phone rang, she answered the phone knowing that it was a customer, Roy attempted to answer the telephone but she pushed his hand away, that the customer was outside the apartment, and she gave him directions as to how to find her. The Court held that all of the relevant evidence that could have been shown by the videotape was established through L.S.’s testimony, and therefore there had been no error in excluding the videotape.

Also during cross-examination of L.S., defense counsel proposed to introduce several photographs that Roy had taken of the victim. The purported purpose of the photographs was to show that L.S. did not have bruises. The Court held that these photographs had been correctly excluded, as they did not show whether the victim had bruises because none of the photographs showed her entire body, and the victim could have had bruises on the portions of her body that were hidden from the camera. The Court held that there was no error in excluding the photographs, as they had no probative value for the purpose for which they were purportedly offered.

Moreover, Roy argued that the prosecutors had engaged in misconduct, primarily by failing to fulfill their constitutional obligation to disclose exculpatory evidence. Roy contended that the prosecutors failed to disclose a prior felony conviction that L.S. had for possession of a controlled substance, that L.S. had previously provided false information in connection with a murder investigation, and that L.S. had a prior prostitution history and continued engaging in prostitution after Roy's arrest and incarceration. The Court ruled that the prosecutors did not fail to disclose the victim’s prior conviction, as they provided the victim’s rap sheet, which satisfied the prosecutors' obligations in this regard.

Roy then argued that the prosecutors failed to disclose evidence that L.S. had previously given false statements in connection with a murder investigation. The Court noted that the prosecutors' duty of disclosure extends not only to evidence known to the prosecutor but also “any favorable evidence known to the others acting on the government's behalf in the case, including the police.” However, the Court found that in this case, there was no indication that anyone working on the government's behalf knew about L.S.’s false statement in the Beasley case. Moreover, the prosecution did not suppress any evidence of L.S.’s involvement in the Beasley case, as this was a matter of public record, including a published opinion of the Arkansas Supreme Court.

The defendant also claimed that the prosecutors had failed to disclose that L.S. supposedly engaged in prostitution before meeting Roy and continued to do so after Roy was arrested and incarcerated. Roy argued that the prosecutors must have known that L.S. had engaged in prostitution before and after Roy's arrest and conviction because they filed a motion in limine to preclude the defense from offering such evidence. Contrary to this, the Court found that the fact that the prosecutors anticipated that the defendant in a sex-crime case might attempt to offer evidence that the victim had engaged in sexual misconduct, did not imply that they knew or believed that such evidence existed. Finally, and as explained above, the Court excluded all of that evidence pursuant to Rule 412.

The Court concluded that Jermaine Lamon Roy had been afforded a fair trial. No admissible evidence had been excluded, nor was there any prosecutorial misconduct. Therefore, the Court denied Roy's motions for new trial.