Memorandum questioning federal prosecution of a local prostitution case and citing statutory limits

Honorable Mark Filip May 19, 2008 Page 4 These statutes are intended to target crimes of a truly national and international scope. Specifically, § 1591 was enacted to combat human trafficking, § 2422 is aimed at sexual predation of minors through the Internet, and § 2423 deals with sex tourism. The nature of these crimes results in multi-jurisdictional problems that state and local authorities cannot effectively confront on their own. However, Mr. Epstein’s conduct was purely local in nature and, thus, does not implicate federal involvement. After researching every reported case brought under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1591, 2422(b), and 2423(b), we found that not a single case involves facts or a scenario similar to the situation at hand. Our review of each precedent reflects that there have been no reported prosecutions under § 1591 of a ‘john’ whose conduct with a minor lacked force, coercion, or fraud and who was not profiting from commercial sexual trafficking. There have likewise been no cases under § 2422(b)—a crime of communication—where there was no use of the Internet, and where the content of phone communications did not contain any inducing or enticing of a minor to have illegal sexual activity as expressly required by the language of the statute. Furthermore, the Government’s contention that “routine and habit” can fill the factual and legal void created by the lack of evidence that such a communication ever occurred sets this case apart from every reported case brought under § 2422(b). Lastly, there are no reported cases of violations of § 2423(b) of a person whose dominant purpose in traveling was merely to go to his own home.? Although these matters were within the scope of the CEOS review, rather than considering whether federal prosecution is appropriate, CEOS only determined that U.S. Attorney Acosta “would not be abusing his prosecutorial discretion should he authorize federal prosecution” in this case. The “abuse of discretion” standard constitutes an extremely low bar of evaluation and while it may be appropriate when the consideration of issues are exclusively factual in nature, this standard fails to address concerns particular to this situation, namely the “novel application” of federal statutes. The “abuse of discretion” standard in such pure legal matters of statutory application risks causing a lack of uniformity. The same federal statutes that would be stretched beyond their bounds in Miami have been limited to their heartland in each of the other federal districts. Also, because this case implicates broader issues of the administration of equal justice, federal prosecution in this matter risks the appearance of selectivity in its stretching of federal law to fit these facts. 3 Federal prosecution of a man who engaged in consensual conduct in his home that amounted to, at most, the solicitation of prostitution, is unprecedented. Since prostitution is fundamentally a state concern, (see United States v. Evans, 476 F.3d 1176, n.1 (11th Cir. 2007) (federal law “does not criminalize all acts of prostitution (a vice traditionally governed by state regulation)”)), and there is no evidence that Palm Beach County authorities and Florida prosecutors cannot effectively prosecute and punish the conduct, there is no reason why this matter should be extracted from the hands of state prosecutors in Florida. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_010726