New York Governor Eliot Spitzer hired a prostitute from New York to meet him in Washington, D.C. He may have violated a 1910 law protecting women from "immoral purposes."
As seen in JFK’s dalliance with Marilyn Monroe to Lewinsky-gate to the recent revelation that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer hired a high-caliber prostitute, it's clear sex and politics don’t mix. In Spitzer’s case, he built his political career on fighting corruption and instilling morality, first as the State Attorney General and then as Governor, Now, it appears Spitzer has ignored his own principles by hiring prostitutes over the course of his time in power. But did he violate the law?
As the result of a federal wiretap placed on the Emperor’s Club VIP escort service, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District (which includes New York) filed a complaint indicting four principals of the club for running a prostitution ring and money laundering. Within their investigation, the FBI discovered Eliot Spitzer hired a New York-based prostitute while he was staying at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., on February 13. Significantly, he requested that the prostitute, “Kristin,” take the 5:39pm train from Manhattan to Washington and arranged to pay for her ticket.
Aside from the problematic moral questions raised by Spitzer’s conduct, one particular legal uncertainty awaits resolution. This action would appear to violate the Mann Act, a nearly century-old federal law named for its sponsor, Representative James Robert Mann of Illinois. Officially titled the United States White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910, the law aims to “regulate interstate commerce and foreign commerce by prohibiting the transportation therein for immoral purposes of women and girls.” Section 3 of the Act holds that anyone who persuades “any woman or girl to go from one place to another in interstate or foreign commerce…for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose,” and causes her to “go and be carried or transported as a passenger upon the line or route of any common carrier” is guilty of violating the Mann Act. This felony carried a maximum sentence of a $5,000 fine, five years in prison, or both.
The law was originally proposed to counter the supposedly widespread “white slave” trade of the Gilded Age, in which men, usually foreign or ethnic minorities, were believed to kidnap and coerce innocent white women into sexual slavery, immorality and prostitution. The fear of white slavery was so great that it spawned its own film genre during the early days of cinema, with films like The Inside of the White Slave Traffic and A Traffic in Souls revealing the nefarious doings of the slavers and heroic rescues of their white victims.
In practice, the FBI selectively enforced the law to disproportionately target black men, especially in the Jim Crow South; men were also targeted if their wives or girlfriends were much younger or underage. Actor Charles Chaplin was tried for violating the Mann Act, but later acquitted, for his affair with the young actress Joan Barry (he was 53, she was 22).
It is up to the U.S. Attorney’s office to decide whether to prosecute Eliot Spitzer for Mann Act violations or other legal missteps, and charges are by no means assured. In federal cases involving prostitution rings, the ringleaders and prostitutes are most often tried—the male clients, like Spitzer, frequently escape indictment.
