N. Woodmere man’s sex-slave conviction restored

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday restored the 2007 conviction of a North Woodmere man who had been sentenced to nine years in prison for the sadomasochistic torture of a woman he met on the Internet.

In a 7-1 vote, the court overturned an August 2008 federal appeals court ruling that had granted Glenn Marcus, 56, a new trial in the sensational sex-slave case, which dates to 1998, when he met the woman online. The justices sent the case back to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to determine if a procedural error the lower court had cited in its 2008 decision affected "substantial rights."

A three-judge 2nd Circuit appeals panel — which included future Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor — set aside Marcus's 2007 conviction because many of his alleged crimes took place before the October 2000 enactment of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which was used in his prosecution. Sotomayor did not participate in the high court's ruling on Marcus's case.

Justice Stephen Breyer, in delivering the opinion of the court, wrote that the procedural violations mentioned by the 2nd Circuit did not justify having the charges thrown out, since some of the offenses clearly occurred after the TVPA went into effect. "We do not intend to trivialize the claim that respondent here raises," Breyer wrote. "Nor do we imply that the kind of error at issue here is unimportant. But, the court found, that issue was not significant enough to have affected the outcome in the case."

In the closing paragraph of Breyer's opinion, he wrote, "As the Court of Appeals has not yet considered whether the error at issue in this case satisfies this Court's 'plain error' standard — i.e., whether the error affects 'substantial rights' and 'the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings' — we remand the case to that court so that it may do so."

Marcus's attorney, Herald Price Fahringer, said he was happy that the high court's ruling sent the case back to the 2nd Circuit, keeping his hope for a new trial alive. "We have high expectations that when it goes to the 2nd Court, they will still find there was plain error and [Marcus] will get a new trial," Fahringer said.