By NEAL WAGNER / Managing Editor

COLUMBIANA – A Shelby County grand jury will decide during an upcoming session if it will uphold a human trafficking charge against a man who was allegedly involved in an “illegal escort service” in Alabaster.

On March 6, Shelby County Circuit Court Judge Daniel Crowson bound a second-degree human trafficking charge against Hoover resident Sutton Stafford Burleigh over to the grand jury. The grand jury will now review evidence in the case, and will decide it if will uphold the human trafficking charge.

The Alabaster Police Department arrested Burleigh along with 54-year-old Jeffrey Todd Langley on Sept. 29, 2016, during an investigation into what police said was an illegal escort service involving at least one juvenile victim in and around the Alabaster area.

Langley was released from jail on bonds totaling $136,000 the day after he was arrested, but was booked back into the Shelby County Jail on a bond revocation in December 2018 after he was arrested on a drug charge in Jefferson County. He is now awaiting trial in Shelby County Circuit Court.

He faces up to life in prison if he is convicted of the first-degree human trafficking charge, and up to 20 years in prison if he is convicted of the second-degree human trafficking charge.

Burleigh was charged with one count of second-degree human trafficking and was released from jail the same day he was arrested after posting a $60,000 bond.

According to the indictments, Langley allegedly “arranged/provided individuals for (four victims) to engage in sex with for U.S. currency” between Jan. 1, 2008 and Sept. 23, 2016. Burleigh was allegedly involved in the illegal activity in June 2016, according to his arrest warrant.