Alamo lawyer says sex claim wasn’t proved

LITTLE ROCK — Echoing arguments made during evangelist Tony Alamo’s criminal trial last year, an attorney told a panel of appeals court judges Tuesday that prosecutors failed to show that sex was the “dominant purpose” for the preacher taking underage girls across state lines.

Instead, John Wesley Hall Jr. argued, the girls who said they were Alamo’s “wives” traveled for a variety of reasons, sometimes going on trips without Alamo and then returning. In other instances, the girls accompanied Alamo while he attended to church affairs.

Members of the three judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis quizzed Hall about the argument, asking what purpose the girls served on the trips besides being Alamo’s sexual companions. Judge Lavenski Smith noted that Alamo could have directed a girl’s travel even if he didn’t take the trip himself.

“If I send someone to go get me something out of state, aren’t I responsible?” Smith asked.

Hall responded that prosecutors were required to show that the transportation was related to sex. In some cases, he said, the “interstate transportation has nothing to do with the act. It’s incidental at best.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kyra Jenner countered, “the record is replete with the testimony of these five young women who made it very clear Mr. Alamo had one reason for having them in his company, and that was for them to be his sexual companions.”

Alamo, 76, was convicted in July 2009 of 10 violations of the federal Mann Act, which prohibits taking someone across state lines for “any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense.” He was sentenced in November to 175 years in prison and is being kept at the U.S. Penitentiary in Tucson, Ariz.

In an e-mail, Hall said Alamo, who is legally blind, was assigned to a solitary cell at the prison after being assaulted. He also said Alamo has not had access to his “seeing machine,” a device used to enlarge print. Hall didn’t return calls Tuesday seeking additional details about the complaints.

Edmond Ross, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, declined to provide any information about the allegations, saying “the internal operation of the federal prisons is not public information.” He added that inmates who feel that they have been mistreated can file grievances that will be investigated by the prison staff.

Prosecutors said the five victims in the criminal case, now ages 19 to 32, were taken as Alamo’s polygamous “wives” at ages as young as 8 and were kept under his strict control. The counts in the indictment referred to trips the girls took with Alamo or at his direction from March 1994 through October 2005.

Addressing the appeals court judges Tuesday, Hall noted that two counts referred to trips a girl made from Fouke in Miller County to visit her mother in Moffett, Okla. He acknowledged testimony that Alamo had sex with the girl before and after the trips, but he contended that the sex had nothing to do with the travel.

Jenner responded that the count accused Alamo of directing the girl to return to Fouke so that “the sexual relationship could be perpetuated.”

“The entire trip was not elective by the child, was not elective by the child’s mother, but was totally directed by the defendant,” Jenner said.

Hall also argued that U.S. District Judge Harry Barnes improperly drew on religious beliefs in his remarks at Alamo’s sentencing hearing. Barnes said at the hearing, “Mr. Alamo, one day you will face a higher and greater judge than me. May he have mercy on your soul.”

Jenner said the sentence was based on federal guidelines and took into account factors such as the victims’ ages and the position of trust that Alamo held.

“The court was well within its purview of imposing a sentence that reached 175 years total, and that was not a result of the court’s personally held religious feelings,” Jenner said.

In addition to Smith, the panel included judges Kermit E. Bye of Fargo, N.D., and C. Arlen Beam of Lincoln, Neb. The judges said the matter would be taken under advisement and a decision rendered “in due course.”