The defendant waffled, the prosecutor looked exasperated, the defense attorney intervened and the judge weighed in.
Finally, after more than an hour of whispers and negotiations, Damon Michael DiMartino admitted he was guilty of prostituting a Forest Lake girl.
His plea Tuesday, which he said he was making of his own free will, came just as his trial was to begin in Washington County District Court. The jury waited outside the courtroom door as DiMartino, 40, dabbed his eyes with a tissue before agreeing to a 20-year prison sentence for promoting prostitution of a minor.
The unexpected plea came a day after a jury was selected, but it spared the girl from testifying, said Fred Fink, the county's criminal division chief.
"It's a good thing to save her from that," he said.
DiMartino was on 15 years' probation in the summer of 2015 for his most recent of two criminal sexual conduct convictions when he began forcing the girl, then 17, to strip for men.
On Oct. 14, 2015, he drove her from Forest Lake to a hotel in St. Paul to meet a man for sex. That became the crime for which he was convicted.
Prosecutor Imran Ali, of the Washington County attorney's office, asked DiMartino a series of procedural questions to verify his guilt for the court record. DiMartino at first denied knowing the girl was younger than 18.
