South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Judge refuses to toss Maxwell’s sex trafficking conviction
NEW YORK — A U.S. judge refused to throw out Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking conviction Friday, despite a juror’s failure to disclose before the trial that he’d been a victim of childhood sexual abuse.
Maxwell, a British socialite, was convicted in December of helping the millionaire Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse several teenage girls.
U.S. Judge Alison Nathan declined to order a new trial weeks after questioning the juror under oath in a New York courtroom about why he failed to disclose his personal history as an abuse survivor on a questionnaire during the jury selection process.
The juror had said he “skimmed way too fast” through the questionnaire and did not intentionally give the wrong answer to a question about sex abuse.
“I didn’t lie in order to get on this jury,” he said.
In an opinion certain to trigger a higher court appeal, Nathan said the juror’s failure to disclose his prior sexual abuse during the jury selection process was highly unfortunate, but not deliberate.
The judge also concluded the juror “harbored no bias toward the defendant and could serve as a fair and impartial juror.”
Had the juror answered the questions correctly,
Maxwell’s lawyers had said they potentially could have objected to the man’s presence on the jury on the grounds that he might not be fair to a person accused of a similar crime.
The U.S. attorney’s office declined comment Friday. Messages were also left with Maxwell’s attorneys.
Maxwell, 60, was convicted of sex trafficking and other charges after a monthlong trial that featured testimony from four women who said she played a role in setting them up for abuse by Epstein.
Epstein killed himself in August 2019 as he awaited trial at a federal jail in New York on related sex trafficking charges.
Maxwell says she’s innocent.
After the trial’s conclusion, the juror, identified in court papers only as Juror No. 50, gave interviews with several media outlets describing deliberations, and disclosing that he’d been abused as a child.