High Court affirms prostitution conviction

The Supreme Court has affirmed the conviction of a woman on a prostitution charge and junked her grounds for appeal, including discrimination in that her pimp struck a more favorable plea agreement with government prosecutors.

The High Court affirmed the conviction of Liyuan Zhang Attao, saying that evidence presented at the trial court was sufficient. It also junked the claim of Attao that the Superior Court erred when it did not intervene in plea negotiations between her and the government, saying that the law absolutely bars judges to intervene in such talks.

Superior Court associate judge David Wiseman convicted Attao two days before Christmas in 2002. Evidence showed that Attao offered to have sex with Joseph Race, the chief of the Attorney General’s Investigative Unit, who conducted covert law enforcement operation at the Midnight Karaoke in San Jose sometime in June 2002.

During that operation, when another female employee at the bar approached Race and asked to go along to a hotel, Attao pulled him aside and suggested that he tell Su Yong Mei, whom she referred to as “Momma San,” that he only has $200, so that she and the other employee could split the amount. The employees charged Race $150 each for “sex and everything.”

AGIU officers waiting outside the establishment arrested several persons, including Attao, after Race signaled them to do so. The government also charged Momma San with promoting prostitution.

Attao appealed her conviction, citing, among others, that she was subjected to selective prosecution based on her immediate relative immigration status. She claimed that her constitutional right to equal protection was violated because Momma San, who holds a U.S. green card, was offered a more favorable plea bargain.

The Supreme Court ruled, though, that Attao failed to establish that her constitutional right to equal protection was violated for lack of evidence.

“Attao’s argument that she suffered a discriminatory effect appears strong,” it said, adding, though, that “Attao has shown no connection whatsoever between the motive of the prosecutor in choosing to strike the plea bargain that it did with Momma San and Momma San’s status, nor has she shown any connection between the motive of the prosecutor and her own immigration status.”

The court also said that, while a defendant has no constitutional right to plea bargain, the decision to offer a plea bargain is a matter of prosecutorial discretion. “The government can refuse to bargain altogether, as well as cut off or limit negotiations if it chooses to.”