DATE: April 28, 2025

CASE: Lee Williams (Case #24FE008910)

PROSECUTOR: Deputy District Attorney Kate Martin, Human Trafficking Unit

On April 25, 2025, the Honorable Benjamin Galloway sentenced Lee Williams to 31 years and 4 months in state prison.  On March 18, 2025, a jury convicted Williams of human trafficking, pimping, pandering, mayhem and criminal threats.  The jury also found true allegations that Williams personally inflicted great bodily injury under circumstances involving human trafficking; he inflicted great bodily injury in the course of pimping and pandering; the victim was particularly vulnerable; and Williams took advantage of a position of trust.  The court found true an allegation that Williams’ prior convictions were numerous and of increasing seriousness.

On May 20, 2024, Sacramento Police Department detectives responded to a hospital to speak to a potential human trafficking victim who was being treated for major injuries. The victim reported she met Williams a year and a half earlier and moved to Sacramento to live with him as his girlfriend.  Soon after, Williams brought up the idea of the victim engaging in sex work because he needed more money.  Over the next year and a half, Williams used coercion, threats and promises as well as recurring severe violence to ensure the victim continued to engage in sex work.  Williams coordinated dates with sex buyers, set prices for sex acts, approved internet ads and kept all of the money the victim earned from sex work.  The violence included Williams breaking the victim’s arm two different times and punching the victim in the face during an argument over sex work, which caused facial fractures and permanent blindness in her right eye.  On the day she went to the hospital, the victim was riding in Williams’ car when he began to hit her, causing the victim to jump from the moving car to escape him.  The victim suffered extreme road rash all over her body as well as an open compound fracture to her left arm.  When Williams went back and put the victim in his car, the victim called her mother asking for help and to go to the hospital.  Ultimately her mother was able convince Williams to bring the victim to a gas station, so that she could take the victim to the hospital.

Members of the newly formed Sacramento Regional Human Trafficking Task Force were instrumental in this case.