VERDICT QUESTIONED
Defense points to letter arguing jury instructions’ flaws
Bruce Bemer’s lawyers seek to have jury verdicts overturned.
Lawyers for Glastonbury businessman Bruce Bemer have asked Danbury Superior Court Judge Robin Pavia to consider a letter from a Yale law professor that argues her instructions to the jury that convicted Bemer of being an accessory to trafficking in persons were flawed.
The defense asked the judge to overturn the jury’s verdicts and acquit Bemer, or to order a new trial. In April, a Danbury jury convicted Bemer, 65, of four counts of patronizing a trafficked person and a single count of being an accessory to human tracking.
Defense lawyers have attacked all of the convictions, contending the evidence did not prove Bemer knew the young men he paid for sex were being trafficked. They further argue on the human trafficking charge that the judge left out of her explanation of the law to the jury a critical element of the crime.
The state counters that the convictions should stand and that Bemer’s lawyers should follow up with a routine appeal.
Hartford attorney Wesley Horton, who is part of Bemer’s defense team, argued in a motion and a hearing last week that Pavia’s instructions to the jury on “coercion” were flawed and therefore “constitutionally defective.” An essential element of the state law on coercion required the state to prove that King threatened to “expose [a] secret” held by the alleged victims. The state presented no such evidence, the defense argues, and the judge did not explain that essential element of the crime of coercion to the jury.
“A verdict cannot stand where the jury possibly relied on a legally inadequate theory of liability,” Horton argued.
Yale Law School professor William Eskridge, a specialist in interpreting statutes, makes the same point in a letter to Pavia he wrote at the request of the defense. The judge’s instructions to the jury were “not only erroneous, but a miscarriage of justice.”
The phrase “expose [a] secret” is an essential element of the crime of coercion, which is an essential element of the crime of human trafficking, Eskridge argues. If the jury did not have a clear and accurate explanation of law with which to evaluate the evidence, the verdict is flawed, he argued.
“In my view, the Due Process Clause does not tolerate criminal conviction based upon a jury charge that leaves out a fundamental element of the crime,” Eskridge wrote. “It is clear that ‘expose any secret’ is an essential element of the crime. There is no other legitimate way to read the statute.”
Bemer, who turned down a plea agreement that would have allowed him to avoid jail, faces a maximum sentence of 60 years in prison. The charges stem from a sprawling prostitution and human trafficking ring that preyed on troubled men for decades.