The Ramsey County attorney’s office has dropped charges against a woman accused of helping run a sex-trafficking operation out of two St. Paul homes.
The move comes nearly two months after a jury failed to reach a verdict in the case pending against Laqueshia Danekia-Kay’D Moran.
The 23-year-old had faced five felony counts for an alleged role in the scheme, including promoting the prostitution of a minor, soliciting a minor to practice prostitution and engaging in sex-trafficking of a minor.
All five charges were dropped last week, according to court records.
“She is thrilled,” said A.L. Brown, Moran’s defense attorney. “She is healthy and clean and involved in turning her life around.”
Moran’s case was a rarity in Ramsey County, where it’s more common for men than women to face charges related to sex-trafficking.
The St. Paul woman was released from custody in late February after jurors deadlocked in deliberations on her guilt after a roughly week-and-a-half-long trial.
She was in jail since her arrest on the charges in May 2016.
While the county attorney’s office could have opted to retry her case, it dismissed it instead.
“Whenever we have a “hung jury” in any case, prosecutors will re-evaluate,” said Dennis Gerhardstein, a spokesman for the county attorney’s office. “These trafficking cases are not easy to prove and are even harder on our victims who must re-count their abuse and exploitation in open court. In this case, we concluded, based upon victim considerations and the interests of justice, that this defendant should not be re-tried.”
Prosecutors got it wrong when they accused Moran of operating the sex-trafficking scheme along with Darryl Taylor, Brown said.
Instead, she was another of his victims, Brown said.
Taylor was found guilty of sex-trafficking in January for soliciting at least three women, one a minor, to work as prostitutes out of two St. Paul residences between the summer of 2015 and the winter of 2016.
He took pictures of the women and advertised their services on Backpage.com. Many of the images depicted Moran, who also worked as a prostitute out of the residences.
Investigators traced the ads back to Moran’s and Taylor’s cellphones. One of the victims also told investigators that Moran was working with Taylor.
“I am glad that the state has made the right decision,” Brown said of the dismissal. “They have made a wise decision to minimize the harm to Ms. Moran and hopefully they will make the same decision at the outset for other victims who have been sex-trafficked.”