The Akron Legal News

Man who used teen runaway loses appeal of sex trafficking conviction

ANNIE YAMSON
Special to the Legal News
Published: February 12, 2014

In a recently released opinion, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Toledo man was properly found guilty of trafficking a 16-year-old girl and acting as her pimp.

Anthony “Party Time” Willoughby was ordered to serve 30 years in prison by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.

The conviction stemmed from Willoughby’s interaction with SW, a teenage girl who had run away from her foster home in January 2009 with nothing but her purse.

SW stayed with a series of friends until one of them introduced her to Willoughby, a known crack dealer and part-time pimp.

Willoughby, 34 years old at the time, offered SW a place to live.

A summary of the case stated that SW became entirely dependent on Willoughby. She had no phone and no driver’s license.

Almost immediately, he began forcing SW to have sex with him and eventually asked SW if she had ever “sold her body.”

SW later testified that she felt she had no choice but to comply because she was scared.

According to SW and evidence later seized from Willoughby’s residence, he kept the names and phone numbers of his prostitution “customers” in a notebook with Barbie stickers on it.

SW was instructed to call the numbers, identify herself as Jessica or Jasmine and say that she had previously spoken to the customer on a chat line.

She was then supposed to ask, “do you want a show for one hour or two?” and get directions to the house.

“With Willoughby standing over her shoulder — at one point, when she became upset during a call he passed her a note saying ‘Take a breath’ — SW called the men on the list,” the court’s summary stated.

Next to each name, SW wrote down the result of the call — whether it was a wrong number or there was no answer.

Two of the men asked SW to come to their homes.

Willoughby drove SW to their residence and dropped her off.

He gave her instructions to charge $50 for oral sex, $75 for intercourse and $100 for both.

He then equipped her with undergarments, two condoms for each visit and instructions to never kiss the johns on the mouth because that was “reserved” for Willoughby.

He would proceed to wait outside while the men had sex with SW and then take the money when she came outside.

In March, Willoughby began to physically abuse SW.

In a desperate attempt to convince Willoughby to take her back to her foster home, SW bit the inside of her lip hard enough to draw blood and then made herself vomit.

It was “to make him think I was throwing up blood, I was sick,” she told police.

Eventually, Willoughby gave in and drove her back to her foster home, threatening to harm them if she told anyone about what he had made her do.

SW’s foster parents promptly called the police. A search warrant was issued for Willoughby’s home where police found the notebook with Barbie stickers, undergarments that Willoughby had purchased for SW and a camera with photos of SW, among other things.

Willoughby was convicted of sex trafficking a minor through force, fraud or coercion.

The district court sentenced him to prison after applying three sentencing enhancements.

The first one was for exerting undue influence on SW and the others for the fact that SW was a particularly vulnerable victim and that the crime involved the commission of a sex act.

Upon appeal, Willoughby presented several arguments challenging his conviction and sentence, the most serious of which was a claim that the district court mistakenly allowed the government to introduce evidence of his prior bad acts.

Specifically, Willoughby contended that the court should have excluded testimony from Amber Higgenbotham, who told the jury that Willoughby had been her pimp, and Renee Todd, who testified that Willoughby had repeatedly asked her to prostitute for him.

“There are good reasons to doubt that the balance tilts the government’s way,” wrote Judge Raymond Kethledge for the court of appeals. “To begin with the obvious: When jurors hear that a defendant has on earlier occasions committed essentially the same crime as that for which he is on trial, the information unquestionably has a powerful and prejudicial impact.”

The government argued that the other acts testimony was necessary in order to prove Willoughby’s “knowledge,” or that he had “recruited, enticed, harbored or transported SW knowing that she would be caused to engage in a commercial sex act.”

The circuit’s three-judge appellate panel sided with Willoughby by finding that the district court’s admission of the pimping testimony was, in fact, prejudicial.

However, Judge Kethledge also wrote, “Nor can we say that the admission of this testimony, as prejudicial as it was, affected Willoughby’s substantial rights.”

The panel came to the conclusion that the record of guilt without the prejudicial testimony was so “overwhelming” that the district court’s admission of the pimping testimony was harmless and would not have changed the outcome of the trial.

After it overruled Willoughby’s remaining arguments, the appellate panel affirmed the judgment of the district court unanimously, upholding Willoughby’s 30-year prison sentence.

Judge Robert Dow, sitting by designation, and Judge Jeffrey Sutton concurred.

The case is cited United States v. Willoughby, Case No. 12-3822.

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