The jury in the federal sex-trafficking trial of the Alexander brothers, two of whom were once America’s top-earning real estate agents, will start deliberating as soon as Thursday, as prosecutors and defense lawyers rested their case after five weeks of testimony.
Six men and six women must now decide whether Tal Alexander, 39, and his twin brothers, Oren and Alon Alexander, 38, are guilty of a sex-trafficking conspiracy that prosecutors say the three men ran for almost two decades. The three brothers, once regulars on the party scene in Manhattan, Miami and Tel Aviv, face 10 charges.
The brothers have pleaded not guilty. If convicted, they could face life in prison.
Here are four takeaways from the trial.
Prosecutors called nearly 30 witnesses to testify over five weeks.
Those 30 witnesses included 11 women who accused the Alexander brothers of rape or sexual assault.
The testimony was emotional at times. At one point during an accuser’s testimony, Judge Valerie E. Caproni commented that the jury was “hanging onto every word.”
Many of the women accused the brothers of plying them with gifts — such as expensive flights, glamorous homes to stay in or access to exclusive parties — before assaulting them. Others were minors at the time of the alleged attacks. One woman said she was filmed having sex with Oren Alexander in 2009 when she was 17, though said she had no memory of ever meeting him.
Most of the women accused the brothers of drugging them before the assaults, with several describing how they felt “paralyzed” after consuming a drink and one accuser describing her memory as being a “flip book” with missing pages.
During his closing argument on Tuesday, Andrew Jones, an assistant U.S. attorney, argued that the brothers had “used a consistent playbook to lure, isolate and rape their victims.” “Not only did they commit these crimes without remorse,” he added, “they did it with callousness, with a perverse sense of pride.”
The government dropped two charges, saying one witness was intimidated.
Not all of the women who were included in the indictment ultimately testified.
Last week, prosecutors announced that they planned to drop two charges against the brothers tied to events in the Hamptons on Long Island in the summer of 2009, pointing to a pattern of witness intimidation.
In a letter to Judge Caproni last month, prosecutors said that one accuser no longer wanted to participate in the case after a private investigator working for the defense team pretended to be an insurance agent and asked her neighbors about her children.
The defense lawyers, however, argued that the Alexander brothers had alibis for the weekend in question and that all three brothers were in New York City rather than in the Hamptons.
Following the dismissal, the jury will consider 10 charges against the Alexander brothers.
Prosecutors said texts, emails, a video and a blog supported the accusers’ testimony.
Prosecutors introduced text messages and emails between the Alexander brothers and their friends as evidence of the sex-trafficking conspiracy. They showed messages referring to purchasing flights for women, booking summer homes and procuring drugs.
Other messages, prosecutors said, included discussions about the brothers’ targets. The lawyers pointed to an email from Tal Alexander in which he had forwarded flight details for a weekend trip to the Hamptons.
Toward the conclusion of their case, prosecutors introduced a blog that they said the brothers had read and occasionally contributed to around the start of the conspiracy. The website contained vulgar sex terms, insults about women and passages about what doesn’t constitute rape.
Defense lawyers questioned the women’s motives and said the brothers were ‘offensive’ but not criminal.
Lawyers for the Alexander brothers have argued that their clients were “playboys” and “womanizers” but not sex traffickers.
To cast doubt on the accusers’ testimony, the defense lawyers questioned their memories and motives. They argued that no woman was ever drugged and that the accusers’ incomplete memories were the result of alcohol and drugs that had been consumed willingly. Any communication about drugs between the brothers and their friends, they said, was for their own personal use.
Some accusers were cast as jilted lovers who experienced hurt feelings or shame after a one-night stand. Marc Agnifilo, a lawyer for Oren Alexander, argued in his closing statement that some women might have been influenced by reading new media reports about the brothers and decided later that they had been drugged.
Other accusers, the defense lawyers said, have active civil lawsuits against the three men and have a financial incentive to testify. All women, they argue, stand to make a significant amount of money after a guilty verdict.
The lawyers, however, acknowledged that the jury might find the brothers’ behavior crude and arrogant. Howard Srebnick, a lawyer for Alon Alexander, said in his closing statement that the language the brothers used at the time was “offensive, grotesque and unacceptable.”
But, he added, “that doesn’t make it a crime.”
Kate Christobek is a reporter covering breaking news for The Times.
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