The five baristas charged with prostitution for their work at Grab n Go Espresso all have hearings scheduled at Everett Municipal court today. At least three of the women are fighting the charges of prostitution (one woman didn't show up for her hearing, and now a warrant has been issued for her arrest, according to a lawyer at the hearing).

"I’m scouring to find a case—ever, in the history of the United States—like this one that proves prostitution, and I can’t because it’s a stretch,” said Attorney Brian Sullivan, who is representing one of the baristas, Kristina Evenson.

Undercover Everett police officers patronized the drive-through coffee stand in Snohomish County over a period of two months last summer. To build their case, police snapped over a dozen photos of the women showing their breasts and genitalia—turning the women into unwilling porn stars when a public records request made the images public. (You can see the NSFW pictures here.)

“It’s really a matter of what’s an appropriate response in light of what the complaints are," Sullivan said of the city's actions. "Is throwing money at a girl’s bra a sex act? I don’t think it is.” The women all face similar charges despite engaging in a range of different behaviors.

In addition to prostitution, the city prosecutor charged the women with failing to be properly licensed as adult entertainers and failing to adhere to standards of conduct at public places of adult entertainment ("exposing a portion of the female pubic region or buttocks or breasts below the top of the areola... which was visible at the time to the public," according to the criminal complaint filed in Everett Municipal Court).

I caught three of the hearings this morning, in a low-ceilinged courtroom packed with defendants and attorneys from an assortment of cases, all making small talk with one-another and a handful of reporters while waiting for their turn before the judge. The presiding judge looked like a retired walrus.

“I don’t want to fucking be on the news,” one defendant said as she walked into the courtroom and saw a news camera.

Defendant Dana Fitzpatrick, hung back in the crowd, near the door, wearing jeans with horseshoe decals on the pockets and pink platform pumps, nervously twisting her hair and avoiding eye contact while her lawyer, Brian Ashbach, asked the judge for a bench trial in early March (a judge-only trial at which time they would hopefully reach an agreement with the city).

Shortly after Fitzpatrick's attorney spoke to the judge, Sullivan stepped up and asked for motions to dismiss his client’s charges—arguing what she did wasn’t a sex act—and set another confirmation hearing for late March. Evenson was a slight woman in a black suit, her hair carefully curled, who hovered near the door of the courtroom as if waiting for her chance to escape.

“She’s not pleading to anything,” Sullivan told me after the hearing. The city of Everett has charged all five girls with prostitution even though there was no sex, no offers for sex, and no physical contact between the women and customers.

But this case isn't entirely about prosecuting these women. A source close to the case says the city is laying pressure on the women as leverage to testify against Bill Wheeler, owner of four Grab n Go Espresso stands in Snohomish County. The city made an offer to each woman: In lieu of pleading guilty to her charges and facing 30 days in jail and an HIV test (the HIV mandate was later dropped, assumedly because it was insulting and ridiculous), she could fully cooperate with the police investigations and incur a 24-month stay—meaning that after 24 months of good behavior, all charges would be dismissed—that is, unless they received further criminal law violations or refused to testify against Wheeler.

Leloni Michelle Bailey, another defendant, also refused to plead guilty to the charges against her or cooperate with the city. Her case is set for trial in March.
The city is definitely coming down hard on the women. Prostitution charges are usually accompanied by one or two days in jail, not 30, sources close to the case say.

I asked Ashbach his thoughts on the released photographs of the women—photographs that essentially turned risqué baristas into unwilling life-long porn stars (Here are the never-to-disappear from the internet, totally NSFW!!!! pictures and the city of Everett into a producer of smut.

Ashbach, who fought against the photos’ release, says the decision to release them probably followed case law accurately, but didn’t account for the women’s individual rights. “The problem is the Washington public records act is so expansive, it doesn’t take into consideration when individual rights and privacy can be damaged—perhaps irreparably,” he says. “The city trading in nudity is upsetting, and the idea that anyone can look these photos up forever, online, is upsetting.”