Powerful men who possibly availed themselves of a high-priced prostitution ring will have to face public hearings, court rules

The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that a Cambridge clerk-magistrate can hold public hearings on whether to bring charges against a couple dozen alleged clients of a ring that flew in prostitutes from Los Angeles and Las Vegas to render sexual services in high-end Cambridge and Watertown apartments turned into brothels.

The state's highest court agreed with the reasoning of a clerk-magistrate in Cambridge District Court that while "show cause" hearing for misdemeanors, such as paying for sex, are normally private, these cases warranted an exception both because of the high profile of the case and because federal prosecutors, who charged the operators of the ring, emphasized their clients included "government officials, corporate executives, and others in positions of power, wealth, and responsibility," and the cases "raised legitimate public concerns about potential favoritism and bias if such hearings were held behind closed doors, and that these concerns outweighed the interests in continued anonymity for the Does."

The court added that any stigma the allegedly well heeled clients, collectively, the Does - might face is outweighed by the public's right to know:

The briefing [by the Does] here does not identify with specificity what, besides stigma, is at stake by opening the show cause hearings to the public. Speculation as to the future possibility that permitting public access to the hearings could result in an individual employer choosing to take unfavorable action, of its own accord, against one of the accused does not amount to the State depriving the accused of a liberty or property interest.

And it agreed with the clerk-magistrate, who said that for too long, men who had paid for sex were shielded from public scrutiny even as the women they paid were often named publicly, or as the court summarized her argument:

[T]here has been a historical trend to protect or, at the very least, not name buyers who fuel the commercial sex industry, rendering them unaccountable. Reversing that practice and providing the public with access that will allow it to evaluate the fairness of treatment provides a strong counterweight to the privacy interests of those responding to the complaints.

However, in its ruling, the justices did agree with the Does that the applications for criminal charges filed by Homeland Security in Cambridge court must remain private, because those applications could contain erroneous information that the Doe men would not otherwise be allowed to contest in an attempt to show why they should not be charged. And the court set a new rule for lower courts: That clerk-magistrates thinking of opening show-cause hearings to the public must first notify potential defendants of that, to give them a chance to first argue to keep their hearings closed.

In September, one of the people charged in federal court with running the ring, Han Lee, 42, of Cambridge, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to persuade, induce, entice, and coerce one or more individuals to travel in interstate or foreign commerce to engage in prostitution and one count of money laundering conspiracy. Her sentencing in US District Court in Boston was scheduled for Dec. 20.

Last month, another participant, Junmyung Lee, 31, pleaded guilty to the same charges. He is scheduled for sentencing on Feb. 12.

Case docket - has links to briefs by parties on both sides.