Courts, Criminal law

It’s Hard Out There for a Pimp

-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger

The California Supreme Court has ruled on a case involving California’s pimp law. Jomo Zambia was in his car at a “notorious intersection,” known for its plethora of prostitutes. He offered his pimp services to a woman he believed to be a prostitute. These services “included providing housing and clothing, if she turned over all of her money to him.”

The prostitute turned out to be an LAPD Officer working undercover. Zambia was arrested and later convicted of the crime of pandering, as one who “induces, persuades or encourages another person to become a prostitute.”

The California Supreme Court has decided if it’s possible to convict a defendant for encouraging another person to become a prostitute when that person is already appears to be a prostitute.

In People v. Zambia the court held that the state’s pandering law does apply to a pimp who recruits a current prostitute to work for him. The court reasoned:

The phrase “encourages another person to become a prostitute” can readily be understood to encompass the goal that the target “become a prostitute” in the future for the benefit of the encourager or some other pimp.

Two judges dissented from this interpretation. Judge Joyce Kennard, wrote that she “cannot fathom how one can ‘become’ what one already is.”

H/T: Legal Blog Watch.

12 thoughts on “It’s Hard Out There for a Pimp”

  2. Pingback: Nude call cards advertising prostitutes facing legal ban in Queens « malihaexposed

  4. Frank Zappa’s “Willie the Pimp”

    I’m a little pimp with my hair gassed back
    Pair a khacki pants with my shoes shined black
    Got a little lady…walk the street
    Tellin’ all the boys that she can’t be beat
    Twenny dollah bill I can set you straight
    Meet me onna corner boy’n don’t be late
    Man in a suite with bow-tie neck
    Wanna buy a grunt with a third party check
    Standin’ onna porch of the Lido Hotel
    Floozies in the lobby love the way I sell
    Hot meat, hot rats, hot zits, hot chest, hot ritz, hot roots, hot soots

  5. OT, but following Buddha… After Rachel Maddow’s interview with Weiner, I’m waiting for his “I am not a creep” video

  6. “Ambitious Weiner sees media strategy backfire”

    For a moment, I thought this MSNBC headline was about this story, but it turns out it was about a different kind of pimp.

  10. So she was posing as a prostitute and he got done for trying to make her in to one, sounds like a miscarraige of justice to me.

  11. I stand by what I wrote in Fall 2009 to JT’s “Men Lining Up for Admission into John School”

    In the article it states “The thinking is: Women won’t stop selling sex until men stop buying.” That underscores that both parties are voluntarily making this transaction!

    The government has worked on the supply side and the demand side in the war on drugs for decades, and what has it brought us? Global criminal gangs? Corrupted law enforcement? Rampant property crime? Twisted economic opportunities for youth? Ever harder drugs? Widespread diseases and dangers for users?

    Hypocritically, our society both permits and accepts this same conduct – sex for money – when both parties are compensated, such as in adult films.

    Decriminalize. Legalize. Walk away.

  12. The war on prostitution diverts law enforcement focus from child sex crimes, and helps to add to a massive, violent and corrupting underground economy that has arisen from the War on Drugs.

    Meanwhile, the police state continues to grow. At Urban Beach Week in Miami, police seized and destroyed cameras at gunpoint that were used to record police violence.

    Shortly after the gunfire ends, an officer points at Benoit and police can be heard yelling for him to turn off the camera. The voices are muffled at times. The 35-year-old car stereo technician drops his hand with the camera and hurries back to his Ford Expedition parked further east on 13th Street.
    The video shows Benoit get into the car, where his girlfriend, Ericka Davis, sat in the driver’s seat. He raises his camera and an officer is seen appearing on the driver’s side with his gun drawn, pointed at them.

    The video ends as more officers are heard yelling expletives, telling the couple to turn the video off and get out of the car.
    “They put guns to our heads and threw us on the ground,” Davis said.

    Benoit said a Miami Beach officer grabbed his cell phone, said “You want to be [expletive] Paparazzi?” and stomped on his phone before placing him in handcuffs and shoving the crunched phone in Benoit’s back pocket.

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