A man who is facing a Sept. 19 jury trial on charges of forcing underage girls to engage in commercial sex acts out of a North Little Rock hotel wants a federal judge to keep jurors from hearing about one girl's identification of him as a man she knew as "Big Face."
After a hearing Wednesday on Dana Royce Deffenbaugh's motion to suppress the girl's December 2014 identification of him to an FBI agent, U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes said he expects to issue a written ruling in the next few days.
Deffenbaugh was indicted last year on one count of sex trafficking of a minor, for which he faces 15 years to life in prison if convicted, and one count of sex trafficking by use of force or threats, for which he faces 10 years to life if convicted.
The FBI began investigating the case after North Little Rock police received a call Dec. 28, 2014, from a man who reported that "several young juvenile females" were being held against their will at America's Best Value Inn at 3100 Main St. in North Little Rock. The caller, Alfred McKinley, said he was friends with the family of one of the girls, a 17-year-old, and that he had learned she was being held against her will when he went to pick her up.
McKinley tried to wait at the hotel with the girl for police to arrive but said she was too "terrified," so he took her to her mother and sister, who were staying at a Motel 6 in Little Rock. That's where a North Little Rock officer sent to investigate the call met the girl, who he said showed him a photograph of Deffenbaugh on her mobile phone, identifying him as her pimp.
The officer said the girl further described the man as 30 years old, black, 6 feet 2 inches tall, weighing about 200 pounds, with a slender build and "long straight hair with twists."
Prosecutors said the description perfectly matched Deffenbaugh, a man who it turned out was already the subject of an FBI investigation.
Katie Rowbottham, an FBI agent based in Little Rock who specializes in crimes against children, testified Wednesday that before she interviewed the girl the next day, she discovered that an investigation was already underway in Baltimore of a man matching the same "distinctive" description who was known as "Big Face."
"There had been 15 to 20 reports of him trafficking women from Memphis to New Orleans, and also in Nevada," Rowbottham said. She said FBI files also contained information on "Big Face" from other pimps.
Rowbottham said she made prints of some of Deffenbaugh's Facebook photos, in which he was identified as "Big Face" and in several instances was with "very young girls," many of them Hispanic.
Rowbottham said she was concerned that there would be "numerous juveniles in danger," and also knew from the North Little Rock police report that the 17-year-old girl had already identified a photograph of Deffenbaugh, so she took the printed-out photos that showed other potential victims to the meeting with the girl. She said the girl noticed Deffenbaugh in the pictures and voluntarily said, "That's Big Face."
The girl told the agent that she had known Big Face for about a month, after meeting him through another girl who worked for him as a prostitute.
When the 17-year-old went to Big Face's hotel room for the first time, he told her, "You my ho," and, "You work for me now," Rowbottham said. She said the girl told her that Big Face then had sex with her and gave her a drug known as Molly, "so she could stay up and be with more men."
Molly is a narcotic and "made her feel dizzy, kind of made it easier for her," Rowbottham testified in an earlier hearing.
The agent testified that the girl said she told Deffenbaugh she was only 17, and "he told her not to tell anybody."
Deffenbaugh took pictures of the girl, mostly in her bra and panties, to post on the Backpage.com website the day after he met her, the agent testified. Rowbottham said the girl handed her a price list that she said Deffenbaugh forced her to comply with. It contained different prices for various amounts of time spent with Deffenbaugh's girls, such as a 15-minute session for $30.
The agent said the girl told her that she had sex with an average of 20 to 25 men a day, and had to turn all the money she earned, even tips, over to Deffenbaugh at day's end.
"If she didn't provide the money, she would be beat, or she stated she would get whupped," Rowbottham testified in an earlier hearing.
Deffenbaugh's attorney, Blake Hendrix of Little Rock, argued that the "identification procedure" used by Rowbottham was "suggestive and unnecessary," and may have created "a substantial likelihood of misidentification."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Allison Bragg argued that while the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis has held that a single-photograph display is impermissibly suggestive, "in this case, the single-photograph display occurred two days after the minor had already identified the defendant in her own photograph ... removing the need for a photo lineup. The procedure was not suggestive because the minor provided the initial photo herself."
In a Dec. 31 order in which Judge Holmes refused to overrule a magistrate judge's order to keep Deffenbaugh behind bars until trial, Holmes cited concerns about the public's safety and a likelihood that Deffenbaugh could flee before trial.
Holmes wrote: "The evidence at the detention hearing established that Deffenbaugh is engaged in the commercial sex business using females to perform sex acts. In other words, he is a pimp. The evidence established that he threatened to use force against females who work for him, including threats to use lethal force against females who would attempt to leave him."
Holmes cited evidence that Deffenbaugh had used physical force against a girl who worked for him, and noted, "the report from the pretrial services officer shows that Deffenbaugh has been charged criminally in approximately sixty instances in nine different states."
Metro on 09/08/2016