Lawyers for accused sex buyers in a high-end brothel bust last year brought their arguments to the state Supreme Judicial Court, imploring the justices to keep their clients’ identities out of public record Monday morning.
On Nov. 8, 2023, the acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts announced the arrest of three people accused of running a high end brothel out of the suburbs around Boston and Washington D.C.
Prosecutors said clients included “elected officials, high tech and pharmaceutical executives, doctors, military officers, government contractors that possess security clearances, professors, attorneys” and others, and a Homeland Security investigator filed applications for criminal charges against 28 alleged Johns in December.
The names remained undisclosed, leading multiple media outlets to seek public access to the applications and the defendant’s show-cause hearings. A Clerk-Magistrate opened up the hearings but did not allow access to the applications, a decision upheld by a single justice before it moved before the full Supreme Judicial Court on Monday.
Lawyers for the defendants on Monday emphasized the harm to the accused parties’ reputations and stated their clients were not given proper notice to defend themselves against the media’s requests for access.
“Upon the applications of the media to open up these hearings, the decision was issued two days later,” Benjamin Urbelis, a lawyer representing five John Does, addressed the Justices. “The John Does didn’t even know if they were defendants in this case, let alone have an opportunity to be heard. And these are liberty interests. Because undoubtedly, even if there’s no probable cause, once their name is out there in the media, livelihoods are going to be ruined, occupations likely lost, families ripped apart.”
A lawyer for the Boston Globe, WBUR and NBC Boston argued both disclosures of hearings and applications were necessary to the public interest, which outweighed the defendants’ right to privacy in this matter.
“What the public perception will be if these hearings are closed, or if these applications don’t allow for the proper reporting of these hearings, is that anybody who is not charged will have not been charged because they got some kind of preferential treatment behind closed doors at the hearing,” said the media outlets’ lawyer Jeffrey Pyle. “And that is a significant concern.”
Even if the court finds no probable cause, Pyle said, the access is important to “assure the public that equal justice is being done among these different defendants who come from different walks of life.”
The accused Johns’ lawyer argued the occupations of the accused should never have been disclosed in the November press release, stating “we’re only here today because the U.S. Attorney made an improper comment about public officials being among the uncharged purchasers in a multi-state sex trafficking investigation.”
“If there’s a leak that there’s a public official among those being investigated by a grand jury is that going to open the door to now TV cameras being within grand jury proceedings?” said Urbelis. “I think that should not be grounds to open up hearings.”
A representative for the Clerk-Magistrate of the Cambridge District Court also weighed in, arguing the clerk neither violated due process nor abused her discretion in her initial decision to open the hearings.
Justices pushed back on the timeline of the clerk’s decision, questioning why the defendants’ were not given the right to be heard before the hearings were opened.
“These show-cause hearings, as they’re called, are presumptively closed,” said Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt. “So that’s a right that these potential defendants have, and it was taken away without so much as a word.”
The lawyer maintained no laws prohibited the clerk from doing so, leading Wendlandt to speculate whether there was precedent for the decision.
Justices pushed both sides on multiple of the issues raised, leaving no clear indication of what their ruling may be.
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