A Little Rock boxer faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison after a jury found him guilty Wednesday on two counts of sex trafficking -- one of which involved a minor -- and one count each of production of child pornography and distribution of child pornography.
The jury of 10 men and two women deliberated for less than three hours before finding Keshawn Boykins, known as "Turbo" in boxing circles and "Turbo Hefner" to federal authorities, guilty of all of the charges brought against him by federal prosecutors. Boykins will be sentenced at a later date.
As U.S. District Judge James M. Moody Jr. read the verdicts, Boykins sat motionless at the defense table, his face betraying no emotion.
During two days of testimony, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kristin Bryant and Benecia Moore and their witnesses, including the two women Boykins was accused of trafficking for sex, took jurors through a detailed journey in which they said Boykins first befriended his victims, then enticed them with promises of money and security that he never intended to keep.
"I told you when we started that you were going to learn about a world that most people know nothing about," Bryant said as she began her closing statement. "Over these past two days you've had an up close and personal view of what that world looks like and how it impacts its victims lives forever."
Reading from a selection of text messages taken from Boykins' cell phone in which he messaged women with entreaties for them to sell themselves under his management with promises of money, cars, a place to live, Bryant said Boykins searched for young women and girls in desperate straits and tried to lure them in to his orbit.
Two of those women, known to the jury only as H.E. and T.M., testified to their experiences with Boykins.
Bryant said when Boykins met H.E. in October 2018, he convinced her to come live with him, T.M., his girlfriend and infant child. Within days, Bryant said H.E. learned Boykins' true intentions as he set up a date for her and coached her on what she was to do. When she refused, Bryant said, Boykins gave her a beating and arranged another date for her for the following day.
But the next morning, October 12, 2018, H.E. managed to escape during a trip to Walmart when she was left alone for a moment, ran from the car, found an employee and asked the employee to call the police. During an interview with police, H.E. told them Boykins had made comments about other women working for him and that he was trafficking T.M.
Bryant said after H.E. escaped, Boykins simply transferred the date he had arranged to the 17-year-old T.M. She told the jury that evidence Boykins knew T.M.'s age was a tattoo of her birthday on her forearm, a report card from the Little Rock School District and an I.D. card found during a search of Boykins' apartment, both with her birthday prominently displayed.
"Do you think this is the life they chose for themselves?" Bryant asked the jury. "Having sex with random men for money, and they didn't even get to keep the money? They had to give it all to him."
Bryant painstakingly walked the jury through the charges against Boykin, instructing them on the elements of each offense as jurors listened intently and looked at the evidence displayed on their video screens. She said in the case of H.E., who escaped before Boykins could prostitute her, the intent to engage in sex trafficking was sufficient to find him guilty.
Bryant read messages from T.M. to Boykins in which she threatened suicide and told him that all the things he had promised her were things he never intended for her to have.
"She even had to ask him for lunch money," Bryant said. "That's how much control he kept over her."
In closing for his client, defense attorney Mark Allen Jesse tried to cast doubt on the true authorship of the hundreds of text messages that were placed into evidence. He pointed out that although H.E. had testified she never sent any messages from Boykins' cell phone, a photo of her that was sent to a prospective customer as proof she was not a ruse or law enforcement was a self-shot image of her standing in a bathroom mirror holding up two fingers.
"You might say that he sent the photo, but he didn't take the picture," Jesse said. "You may say, so what? But they're saying he's the man behind the curtain pushing all the buttons but this is clearly her taking the picture."
He suggested to the jury that both T.M. and H.E. may have surreptitiously acted on their own to arrange dates without Boykins' knowledge.
"But when she says, 'he made me do it,' then she's a victim," Jesse said. "And they've played the victim card quite extensively."
During rebuttal, Moore questioned Jesse's suggestions, saying the photo of H.E. "corroborates everything H.E. told you."
"All that proves is that he handed H.E. the phone and told her to hold up two fingers and take the picture," Moore said, as she recounted H.E.'s refusal to engage in prostitution and her dramatic escape at Walmart.
"Does that sound like somebody who's trying to set up dates on her own?" Moore asked.
Following the verdict, U.S. Attorney Jonathan Ross said the case is an indicator that human trafficking can and does happen everywhere.
"This case makes clear that human trafficking is a real crime happening right here in central Arkansas," Ross said. "It shows that traffickers will use social media to entice and recruit victims they intend to exploit, and this isn't just a problem in large cities. It's a problem right here at home."