Bemer faces sentencing for role in trafficking
Glastonbury businessman wants conviction overturned or judge to order new trial
As his sentencing day approaches, Glastonbury businessman Bruce Bemer’s legal team is working to convince the judge who presided over his human trafficking trial to toss out the jury’s verdicts or to order a new trial.
A hearing on the defense motions is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon in Superior Court in Danbury before Judge Robin Pavia. Bemer is scheduled to be sentenced Friday. A jury convicted him April 10 of four counts of patronizing a trafficked person and a single count of being an accessory to human trafficking.
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.
His legal team, which initially included Anthony Spinella and Wesley Horton, has been bolstered since his conviction with Hartford attorney Hubert J. Santos and former state Supreme Court Justice Joette Katz. Horton will argue Tuesday the jury’s verdict was flawed and should be tossed out because there was no evidence to support it.
A theme in the motion for a judgment of acquittal or new trial is the same one Spinella employed during Bemer’s trial, that there was no evidence that showed Bemer knew the young men he paid for sex were being trafficked by the man who provided them to Bemer, Robert King of Danbury. Bemer and King had an ongoing relationship over at least 20 years where King would provide young men to Bemer. Bemer would pay the men for the acts they engaged in with him.
In his statements to police and the FBI, Bemer readily admitted paying the men for sex.
At the trial, prosecutor Sharmese Hodge presented evidence that showed King plied the young men, some of whom suffered from mental illness and addiction issues, with drugs, and then compelled them to have sex with Bemer to get money to pay King for the drugs he provided. In its motion, the defense concedes the state proved that King engaged in trafficking, but argues that the state presented no evidence indicating Bemer knew what King was doing with the men, or that the men told Bemer what King did to them.
“On the crucial question of knowledge, the jury knew only that King acted as a pimp, providing prostitutes to [Bemer],” the defense motion reads. “The jury knew King and [Bemer] communicated, but they heard almost no evidence showing what was discussed.”
Jurors knew King provided drugs to the alleged victims and collected money from them, but they did not hear any evidence that King and Bemer or Bemer and the alleged victims discussed that, the defense argues.
“The evidence is not sufficient to demon
strate that [Bemer] knew or reasonably should have known that any of the alleged victims were ‘trafficked persons’ at the time of the alleged offenses, where such knowledge is an essential element of the crimes charges,” Spears and a team of attorneys with his firm wrote in the motion.
Horton also contends the judge’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 possibly relied on a legally inadequate theory of liability,” Horton and his team wrote. The defense also argues Bemer was subjected to double jeopardy and Hodge improperly appealed to jurors’ emotions during her closing argument.
In her response, Hodge denies the defense claims and says all the issues raised “are appropriate for appellate review and do not warrant the extraordinary remedy of vacating a jury verdict.”