SLO jury convicts Sacramento man of trafficking teen girl for sex following emotional trial
A San Luis Obispo jury found a self-described “pimp” guilty of trafficking a teenage girl for sex, following a nearly three-week trial that included emotional testimony from the now 17-year-old who recounted for jurors how she was “given away to the streets” at a young age.
Following less than a full day of deliberations, the jury of seven women and five men found Lucion Lee Edward Banks guilty of one felony count of human trafficking, which the complaint says consists of causing, inducing, or persuading a minor to engage in a commercial sex act.
The jurors also found true a sentencing enhancement that alleged Banks committed the crime through the use of force, fear, deceit or menace.
The young woman sat in the audience with a victim’s advocate, quietly holding back tears as the verdict was read.
Banks, 37, now faces a sentence of 15 years to life in state prison when he’s sentenced next month.
He has been held in San Luis Obispo County Jail custody on more than $1 million bail since his arrest in October 2018.
Following the verdict, the District Attorney’s Office praised the trafficking survivor, who testified for more than a day during the trial.
The young woman, who was referred to in the trial only as Jane Doe, said she was very pleased with the jury verdict, according to a department news release Monday.
“I am happy for myself and I feel successful,” she wrote in the statement.
The agency says that the 17-year-old “is doing very well in school and plans to be a beautician in the future.”
“Ms. Doe’s bravery and resilience demonstrated strength and grace as she testified during this trial,” deputy district attorney Christopher White, who prosecuted the case, said in the news release. “I am deeply grateful that so many wonderful people worked so hard to bring justice for our juvenile trafficking survivor.”
SLO traffic stop led to Sacramento man’s arrest
A San Luis Obispo police officer stopped Banks’s vehicle for alleged vehicle code violations as Banks drove in the 3000 block of Broad Street at about 1:40 a.m. on Oct. 5, 2018, according to testimony.
Inside, Officer Quentin Rouse found Banks and the 14-year-old girl.
Rouse’s suspicion grew about a possible trafficking situation when the pair told him they weren’t related and “had no clear story of why they were in San Luis Obispo,” police said in a news release at the time. Banks was also allegedly driving with a suspended license and had a misdemeanor warrant out for his arrest.
A search of the vehicle turned up skimpy female clothing, wigs and condoms, police said, and cell phone data obtained by investigators suggested he was trafficking the girl for paid sex.
According to testimony from Rouse, Jane Doe provided him with Banks’s cellphone password — “pimpin ass”— allowing officers initial access to its contents.
After obtaining a search warrant, investigators allegedly found additional evidence on Banks’s own social media accounts, text messages, and cell records that showed his movement from the Bay Area to Kern County, San Luis Obispo County and other locations in the weeks prior to his arrest.
The girl was turned over to the custody of San Luis Obispo County Child Welfare Services.
Trafficking ‘not just a big city problem,’ witness testifies
Testimony in the trial began March 3 with Timothy Bergquist, an inspector with the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office and member of that county’s human trafficking unit who was called by deputy district attorney Chris White as an expert witness on the subject of prostitution and sex trafficking.
Bergquist, a former officer with the Oakland Police Department, presented the jury with a rundown of how prostitution operates in Oakland, where Jane Doe lived — particularly along International Boulevard, sections of which are notorious hubs for prostitution, particularly underage prostitution.
He testified that he is not aware of the facts in Banks’s case, but explained how prostitutes get into “the life,” how many are groomed by their pimps or traffickers, and how some are held in physically and mentally abusive relationships with their captors.
“(Pimps) dominate their (victims’) life. They are 100% dependent on (them). It’s a lot like domestic violence,” Bergquist said. “The pimp just has to dominate that person, destroy their self-esteem, destroy them every which way so that what they do, how they do it, where they go, who they talk to. Every aspect of their life, they’re now dependent on the pimp.”
He said that while the Bay Area has a robust black market based around vice along portions of International Boulevard, pimps will often take their prostitutes “on the circuit,” or across county lines to pre-arranged clients or venues.
He told the jury that human sex trafficking, a topic that has gained notoriety with increased news coverage in recent years, is not an abstract concept.
“It’s very common — it’s in every state, it’s in every country. You have victims that are educated, uneducated, rich, poor, of all ethnic backgrounds of all sexual orientations,” Bergquist testified. “It’s not just a big city problem or a poverty problem. It’s common everywhere.”
Jane Doe testifies about life on the streets
Jane Doe testified March 9 that, since Banks’s arrest, she was placed under the guardianship of San Luis Obispo County, and spent time in a rehabilitation facility.
She told jurors that her mother, with whom she had an abusive relationship, largely abandoned her in Oakland when she was 10 years old.
“She basically just gave me away,” she said. “She thought I was nothing to her.”
After that, Doe said, she grew up in the downtown Oakland area with “pimps, prostitutes, crackheads and homeless people,” and was taken under the wing of a prostitute friend of her mother’s.
She said the woman taught Jane Doe “how to use my body and talk to people on the streets.”
Her first “john” at age 11 was “scary,” she said.
“It made me feel like I was less of a young woman than I felt like,” she said.
She was controlled by her first pimp at 12 years old, Jane Doe said. She said that while some pimps “play the nice role,” her 24-year-old pimp was physically abusive and would “track (her) down” if she was unaccounted for for a short period of time.
Eventually, the teen said, she left that pimp and ultimately ended up with Banks, who she said was not physically abusive, though she testified that he did punch her twice for non-work-related reasons.
Banks was business-oriented and did not pursue a romantic or sexual relationship with her, she testified. The two traveled by car to clients in the Bay Area, the Central Valley and Los Angeles, often staying at cheap motels near gas stations and other places with heavy traffic.
“I pretty much worked wherever he took me,” Jane Doe said.
Evidence presented in testimony showed that Doe did not get “days off,” and that “a date” with the teen cost between $40 and $60.
Prosecutor: Self-described pimp used ‘toxic mix of fear, love’
In his closing arguments, White, the prosecutor, opened with a quote from Banks’ Instagram account: “Pimping is in my m—g pedigree. I was built for this s—t.”
He said that while Jane Doe was a prostitute and did not initially cooperate with authorities, she could not consent to her activities under Banks’ direction because she was 14 years old.
White said that, from early September 2018 to his arrest that October, Banks exerted “a toxic mix of fear, love, violence, and loyalty” over Jane Doe, demanding that she hand over all of her earnings and stay in constant contact with him while they were on the road.
“(She) didn’t have a family, didn’t have anyone who cared about her. So when you have someone come in and show some attention, it’s everything,” White said.
Cell phone records showed the location of Banks’s phone zigzagging across California from Sept. 12 through Oct. 5, 2018, ending in San Luis Obispo.
He recounted to jurors dozens of text messages shown to them during the trial, including from Banks (“How much is this date 4?” “Bring me my money when u done”) and Jane Doe to Banks (“Daddy, all these tricks falling about 40,” “On date 60”).
Another text from Doe read: “U the one who took me off International ... and showed me that I am worth way more than just 40 dollars.”
“It paints a pattern,” White said, adding that Banks’s exploitation of the teen “wasn’t a one-time thing.” “It defines their relationship.”
While White conceded that Jane Doe had been a prostitute for years before she met Banks and that he “is not responsible for every bad thing that happened in her life,” the prosecutor said Banks took advantage of her situation.
“(Jane Doe) has experienced the consequences of her choices,” White said. “She was paying a price, because every night she went out (to work), she lost a little of her soul.”
He concluded by showing jurors a photo of Jane Doe during her days with Banks, and asked them to compare that image with the strong and confident young woman who testified before them.
Bank’s attorney, Jeffry Radding, told jurors point-blank that “it’s undisputed that Mr. Banks is a pimp.” Though Banks lived “the life” in Oakland and other cities in which he operated, Radding attempted to differentiate between working “the circuit” and the trafficking of a minor.
Radding quoted the prosecution witness Bergquist in telling jurors that while all sex traffickers, in a sense, are pimps, not all pimps are sex traffickers.
He cited testimony that a San Luis Obispo police detective made a hurried effort to secure trafficking charges against Banks to avoid Banks being released from County Jail on a simple misdemeanor warrant on the night of his arrest.
He brought up testimony that Banks asked Jane Doe to “work for him” and intervened when her previous pimp was physically abusing her.
Radding said that Jane Doe’s upbringing into a life of exploitation is “extremely sad stuff, but Mr. Banks had nothing to do with it.”
“Mr. Banks may have aided, abetted, and assisted Ms. Doe in the work she (chose), but that is (not relevant),” Radding said. “It was something she was committed to do on her own.”
Radding told jurors, however, that Officer Rouse and investigators in the case should be commended for getting Jane Doe out of “the life” and “putting her on (a successful) path.”
Jury foreperson calls case ‘tragic’
Outside the courtroom Monday, the jury foreperson, who declined to give his name, told The Tribune that even though deliberations lasted just a few hours, jurors spent most of that time reviewing the facts of the case without pressing each other on their leanings early on.
The foreperson said it was important among to the group that each juror “would not only feel comfortable (with the verdict) today, but also, would we still feel comfortable with our decision three years from now.”
“It’s tragic, both for the defendant and the for the victim,” the jury foreperson said. “But there was a law broken, and that was clear.”
Banks is scheduled to be sentenced April 9.
How to get help
If you or someone you know is being forced to engage in any activity and cannot leave, whether it is commercial sex, housework, farm work, construction, factory, retail or restaurant work, or any other activity, call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888 or Text 233733 (BE FREE).
In San Luis Obispo County, you may contact Crime Stoppers at 805-549-STOP; text “SLOTIPS” plus your message to CRIMES (274637). You can also call the District Attorney Victim Witness Assistance Center at 805-781-5821 or toll-free at 866-781-5821.
This story was originally published March 15, 2021 at 6:10 PM.
