ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — New Mexico state laws aimed at fighting prostitution are outdated and need to be fixed to help authorities go after online sites that promote prostitution, Gov. Susan Martinez said Monday.
Martinez told The Associated Press that she will ask state lawmakers during the next session to pass new legislation making online sites linked to prostitution illegal.
“They’re outdated and they’re old,” Martinez said. “We need to start looking at those laws and make them more responsive to the technology today.”
Martinez said the update would be similar to recent changes state lawmakers approved that included adding text messaging to child predator laws.
She said changes regulating online prostitution are long overdue. “Unfortunately, the Legislature hasn’t kept up with the 21st century,” said Martinez
Her comments came just days after a state judge ruled that a website linked to a former University of New Mexico president accused of helping run an online prostitution ring was legal. The ruling complicated the case for prosecutors, who were scheduled last week to present to a grand jury their case against F. Chris Garcia. The aging college administrator was accused of helping oversee a prostitution website called “Southwest Companions.”
But State District Judge Stan Whitaker ruled that the website, an online message board and Garcia’s computer account did not constitute a “house of prostitution.” Whitaker also said the website wasn’t “a place where prostitution is practiced, encouraged or allowed.”
Garcia, retired Fairleigh Dickinson University physics professor David C. Flory and others were arrested last June on a criminal complaint charging them with promoting prostitution. Flory, a retired physics professor at the New Jersey school and has a home in Santa Fe, is accused of buying the site in 2009.
Experts said that decades-old laws in New Mexico and other states make it difficult for authorities and prosecutors to go after prostitution-linked websites because the laws don’t necessarily outlaw the practice in cyberspace. They said most states’ laws only address street prostitution and brothels.
“Those laws were written so narrowly and so long ago they don’t address online sites,” said Scott Cunningham, a Baylor University economics professor who has written about technology and prostitution.
Cunningham said authorities in New Mexico and other states need specific laws that outline step-by-step new regulations against online prostitution in order to prosecute those cases.
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