by Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book Substack
SDNY COURTHOUSE, May 2 – Michael Paschal is on trial for sex trafficking a 17 year old girl from North Carolina to engage in commercial sex at his direction in a building on Brady Avenue in the Bronx in 2000.
On May 2, 2023 the trial began before U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Vernon S. Broderick. Inner City Press was there, the only media in the courtroom.
After the jury was selected - the voir dire questions included the NYC Agency for Child Services, which kept the victim "Sunshine" in the hospital until returning her to North Carolina - the opening statement were given in the afternoon.
By day's end, the prosecutors were reading into the record a mind-numbing litany of declarations, about Meta, TextNow and Apple records, and foreign business records from Poland.
The exhibits were "published" to the jurors, but not on the larger screen facing the courtroom gallery.
The case is US v. Paschal, 21-cr-331 (Broderick)
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