After Six Years, All Charges Dropped Against ‘Somali Sex-Trafficking Gang’ That Wasn’t
10th March 2016
Federal prosecutors in Nashville announced this week that all charges related to an alleged Somali sex-trafficking ring had been dropped. The decision to drop the charges against 16 remaining defendants comes in the wake of a federal appeals court ruling that three men previously prosecuted as part of the case had been wrongly convicted, owing to the fact that the entire case was a sham.
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As detailed by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, prosecutors’ case against these so-called sex traffickers was based entirely on the faulty testimony of two victims, both of whom were caught in multiple contradictions and lies, and of a Minnesota police officer who was also found to be fabricating facts. And though the case had been billed and prosecuted as one of “child sex trafficking,” one of the allegedly underage victims—intitially described as a 15-year-old—had a falsified birth certificate. It was determined likely that the “minor,” Jane Doe 2, was actually 19-years-old during the time period in question.
At every step of the case, however, red flags that should have given law enforcement pause were ignored or overlooked. Former-U.S. Attorney Todd Jones, then in Minnesota (where the bulk of the alleged activity had taken place), even declined to prosecute the case based on concerns about its quality. But because several of the alleged sex-trafficking incidents had happened in Tennessee, federal agents were able to take the case to trial in Nashville, where a jury acquitted six defendants and convicted three. A trial judge subsequently acquitted these three defendants, but federal prosecutors appealed.
This is horrible. Hopefully there is some way that these jerks wind up in jail. The Somalis are also owed some sort of compensation, as well, although I don’t know what (if any) mechanism exists for providing it.