Ghislaine Maxwell asked a US appeals court to overturn her sex-trafficking conviction, arguing prosecutors made a series of errors in their zeal to scapegoat her after former boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide.
(Bloomberg) — Ghislaine Maxwell asked a US appeals court to overturn her sex-trafficking conviction, arguing prosecutors made a series of errors in their zeal to scapegoat her after former boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide.
The disgraced British socialite, 61, is serving a 20-year prison term after being convicted by a Manhattan federal jury in 2021 of trafficking and sexually abusing underage girls for decades with Epstein.
Maxwell’s lawyers argued in a filing later Tuesday that prosecutors, embarrassed by Epstein’s death in 2019 while in custody awaiting trial on his own sex-trafficking case, sought “to pin the blame for its own incompetence and for Epstein’s crimes” on her. The lawyers also said the government waited too long to bring the charges and twisted a law that carries a five-year prosecution limit to cover “decades old” conduct.
“The government prosecuted Ghislaine Maxwell as a proxy for Jeffrey Epstein,” her lawyers Arthur Aidala and Barry Kamins said in their filing with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan.
Read More: Ghislaine Maxwell Sent to Florida to Serve Sex-Abuse Sentence
Maxwell claims a juror who voted to convict her failed to disclose during jury selection that he was a victim of childhood sexual abuse. US District Judge Alison Nathan said the juror, Scotty David, made a “highly unfortunate” but honest mistake while filing out the jury questionnaire. David, an employee of the Carlyle Group Inc, said in media interviews that he used this background to persuade fellow jurors to convict Maxwell.
“Ms. Maxwell was denied her right to be tried by a fair and impartial jury when a juror revealed that he made materially false statements in jury selection that concealed that he had experienced the ‘exact same thing’ as the victims, namely, childhood sexual abuse,” Aidala and Kamins said Tuesday. “To compound the error, during jury deliberations, he used his undisclosed prior experience to convince other jurors that the defendant was guilty.”
The defense lawyers also argued that the government broke a promise not to pursue charges against Maxwell after the US attorney’s office in southern Florida made a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein and his co-conspirators in 2008.
Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges of soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution, allowing him to avoid federal charges that could have carried a possible life sentence. He instead served 13 months in a work-release program where he was allowed to be free during the day. The Justice Department later concluded then-US Attorney Alexander Acosta used “poor judgment” in approving the deal.
In her appeal, Maxwell also argued that prosecutors joined forces with plaintiffs’ attorneys for women who said they’d been abused by Epstein, and instead targeted her. These lawyers’ “interests were financial,” Aidala and Kamins said, while the four victims who testified against Maxwell at the trial had “faded, distorted and motivated memories.”
The appeal is US v Maxwell, 22-1426, Second Circuit for the US Court of Appeals (Manhattan).
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