The Second Circuit has affirmed Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal convictions, see No. 22-1426 (2d Cir. Sep. 17, 2024). Maxwell is the notorious codefendant of the even more notorious Jeffrey Epstein: per the Second Circuit, “Maxwell coordinated, facilitated, and contributed to Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of women and underage girls” between 1994 and 2004.
After Epstein’s death at the now-shuttered MCC jail, Maxwell was tried before a jury and convicted of conspiracy and sex trafficking offenses. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
On appeal, Maxwell’s lawyers argued that her prosecution was barred by Epstein’s 2007 non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors in Florida; that her indictment came after the applicable statute of limitations had run as to certain offenses; that she was prejudiced by a constructive amendment or variance from her indictment; that her sentence was procedurally unreasonable; and that she should have been granted a new trial based on a juror issue.
The circuit rejects all of these arguments—an outcome you could have predicted by reading the defendant’s name in the case caption.
With respect to the non-prosecution agreement, the circuit holds that an agreement with the United States in Florida does not bind the United States in New York, at least under the terms of this particular agreement. On the statute of limitations issue, the circuit opines that the PROTECT ACT applies to the relevant counts to extend the applicable statute of limitations. The circuit finds no constructive amendment or prejudicial variance. And the circuit concludes that the sentence is reasonable, as it almost invariably does when the sentence is long.
The juror issue is the most notable. It concerns a juror identified in the opinion as “Juror 50” (and identified in the press as “Scotty David”). During pretrial voir dire, on the prospective juror questionnaire, this juror represented that neither he nor any friend or family member had been the victim of sexual abuse.
But after trial, he gave a press interview discussing how he personally had been the victim of sexual abuse; how this experience had informed his evaluation of the trial evidence; and how he had discussed this experience with fellow jurors during deliberations, in turn impacting their evaluation of the evidence. Per the juror:
‘This verdict is for all the victims,’ David told The Independent. …
‘They were all believable. Nothing they said felt to me like a lie,’ he said.
David knows that sometimes you can misremember small details of traumatic memories without ever doubting the core of the memory. He knows that because he is himself a survivor of sexual abuse.
‘I know what happened when I was sexually abused. I remember the colour of the carpet, the walls. Some of it can be replayed like a video,’ he said. He explained this to the jury.
‘But I can’t remember all the details, there are some things that run together.’
So he knew that some misremembered details doesn’t mean the memory itself didn’t happen.
There were also questions from the jury about why the girls didn’t come forward earlier.
But David said he knows what that’s like, too. ‘I didn’t disclose my abuse until I was in high school,’ he said.
The jury room went dead silent when he shared his story, he told The Independent.
David believes this helped the jury understand that it’s possible that these women were telling the truth.
These post-trial revelations led Maxwell’s lawyers to move for a new trial before the district court. The district judge convened a hearing where she questioned the juror but did not allow the parties to do so. She concluded that the juror’s misstatements during voir dire about his own abuse history were “inadvertent mistake[s]” that did “not affect his ability to be fair and impartial.” The circuit found that this was not an abuse of discretion.
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