Ghislaine Maxwell, found guilty at the end of 2021 in New York of sex trafficking of minors on behalf of the deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein, will not be retried in a new trial as she claimed.
“The defendant’s proposal for a new trial is rejected”decided, Friday 1is April, Judge Alison Nathan of the Manhattan Federal Court, according to a court order made public by the American justice.
The former international jet-setter, 60, and her lawyers have been demanding a new trial since one of the Manhattan federal court jurors who convicted her revealed to British media that he himself was a victim sexual abuse in his childhood.
“Explosive revelations”
After the trial, this 35-year-old man, Scotty David, spoke to the press in January and admitted on March 8 in court in New York that he had forgotten to mention, in his answers to a questionnaire to be a juror at the trial, having been sexually abused as a child. This 30-something – called “juror 50” by justice – had then admitted a ” mistake “, not a lie. But the defense of Mme Maxwell believed that the juror could be suspected of bias in having to rule on sexual crimes against underage girls.
For the Manhattan court, “Juror 50 testified credibly and sincerely during his post-trial hearing. It is unfortunate but not deliberate that he did not reveal his past sexual abuse when being selected for trial.Judge Nathan wrote in her order.
“The court finds that juror 50 had no prejudice against the defendant and could be a fair and impartial juror”according to the court document.
This judicial decision was not necessarily expected on Friday. But Judge Nathan was seized urgently at midday by Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyer, Bobbi Sternheim, about the imminent broadcast of a documentary “explosive”.
The documentary series Ghislaine Partner in Crime, filmed during and after the trial, is to be released these days on the Paramount+ streaming platform. Juror Scotty David is interviewed there ” in depth “ and makes there “explosive revelations”according to the lawyer’s letter and a trailer from Paramount.
The sentence known at the end of June
The defense of M.me Maxwell therefore asked the Manhattan judge to “suspend any decision [sur un éventuel nouveau procès] before the court and legal counsel see the interview” in the documentary. Federal justice will have ignored and rejected Maxwell’s request for a new trial.
The daughter of British media tycoon Robert Maxwell – who died in 1991 – was found guilty on December 29 of five of the six charges against her, the most serious of which was sex trafficking of minors for the account by Jeffrey Epstein. The American financier, with powerful economic and political networks in the United States and abroad, was himself accused of raping young girls but committed suicide in prison in August 2019, before his trial.
His companion and accomplice for thirty years, Ghislaine Maxwell – British, French and American – faces decades in prison and will be sentenced at a hearing on June 28.
