Prosecutor and defense rest in Palfrey trial; Vitter won't testify.

Sorry folks, if you were waiting for Diaperman Vitter to testify, you are out of luck. Defense will not call all of their witnesses. Ms. Palfrey's attorney, Preston Burton rest his case. Now the jury has to decide based on prosecution's evidence only. This is the fastest high profiled case that I have heard of.

The trial of a woman accused of running an upscale prostitution ring in the Washington area was wrapping up Monday without testimony by Sen. David Vitter , R-La., or other potential defense witnesses.

The government rested its case Monday, the fifth day of the trial, as did defense attorney Preston Burton, who represents alleged “D.C. madam” Deborah Palfrey. The defense rested without calling any witnesses.

Judge James Robertson delivered instructions to the jury, and the prosecution and defense made their closing arguments. The jury will decide the case based on evidence presented by the prosecution only.

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=2&docID=cqmidday-000002703233

More of the closing arguments from BLT:

In closing arguments, Burton played to the sympathies of the jury and, frankly, all of us who read about or watched the parade of alleged former call girls, each betraying varying degrees of mortification and pique, take the stand during three days of trial. None appeared willingly.

"Those poor people all told you to a person that it was their choice" to have sex with their clients, Burton said. He asked the jury to "restore some dignity to the process" and acquit Palfrey, who ran Pamela Martin & Associates for 13 years, before shuttering the company in 2006 while under investigation.

"Some of them have clearly led hard lives and they deserve sympathy," Burton said. But he cautioned the jury not to "confuse that sympathy for where they are now with sympathy for where they were then when they decided to do what they did."

The trial deals with racketeering-related charges, and the government's challenge today was to boil them down for the jury. After nearly 45 minutes of jury instructions from Robertson, Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Butler told the jury that "the underlying facts are not that complicated."

He said that Palfrey, her employees and the clients knew that Pamela Martin & Associates was a "full service" company. Men expected sex for their $250, he said. "Not to disparage my whole gender," Butler said, "but most men want sex."

"There's no question prostitution was going on here," Butler said. The question is whether Palfrey knew about it, despite her defense. Palfrey "chose her words carefully" and created a hollow contract, forbidding her employees to engage in any illegal activity, as a way to claim "plausible deniability," Butler said.

Court documents show that Palfrey, in something akin to a company newsletter, warned her employees of prostitution stings and at one point told them to not wait for the 90 minutes to expire, but rather to end their dates once their "performance" was done.

Butler apologized to the jury for some of the more explicit testimony — he asked one witness about her menstrual cycle, to the chagrin of everyone present — but defended it. In a case that is fundamentally about sex, "you have to be explicit," Butler said.

And I still have not heard of a timeline of 13 years of federal racketeering and money laundering of Pamela Martin & Associates by Ms. Palfrey from the prosecution because this is what this case is all about. It is not about prostitution only. This is about whether Ms. Palfrey willingly used her company as a front as prostitution to launder money for 13 years. Ms. Palfrey is charged under RICO and federal racketeering statute and not charged under the state laws of prostitution.

Will keep you posted on day one of deliberation.