United States v. Thompson

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The Second Circuit affirmed defendant's convictions for prostituting two minors, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1591, and for employing a minor in the creation of a sexually explicit video, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 2251. The court held that section 1591 was not unconstitutionally vague and rejected defendant's overbreadth challenge; the statutory language in section 1591 requires that the defendant know or recklessly disregard the fact that a minor was younger than 18 years old; and it did not mandate, to support the increased punishment in subsection (b), that the government prove that a defendant knew or recklessly disregarded that a minor was under the age of fourteen.  The court rejected defendant's venue challenge to his conviction under section 2251 where the jury was entitled to find that venue for prosecution lay in the Eastern District of New York. View "United States v. Thompson" on Justia Law