Ghislaine Maxwell requests new sex abuse trial amid concerns over juror's revelation
Ghislaine Maxwell's lawyers on Wednesday filed a formal request for a retrial after raising concerns over a juror's possible failure to disclose that he had been sexually abused as a child.
Maxwell, 60, was convicted late last year for her role in recruiting and grooming teenage girls to be sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein. The British socialite faces up to 65 years behind bars if the conviction on five counts of sex trafficking and other crimes is allowed to stand.
In a letter to U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan late Wednesday, Maxwell’s defense lawyer Bobbi Sternheim said her counsel had “filed her motion for a new trial.”
The letter did not directly attribute the request to concerns over the juror's revelations. However, Sternheim requested that all submissions pertaining to “Juror No. 50” remain under seal until the court has ruled on the motion. Sternheim did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News.
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Earlier this month, Maxwell’s attorneys said they believed that the juror’s account of past sexual abuse was a “compelling basis” to overturn their client’s Dec. 29 conviction and grant a new trial.
The juror’s experience, they said, had potentially “influenced the deliberations and convinced other members of the jury to convict Ms. Maxwell.” The lawyers expressed concerns about the juror's possible failure to disclose their account of past sexual abuse ahead of the trial.
The juror, who was identified only by his first and middle names, Scotty David, 35, in recent interviews with Reuters and British newspaper The Independent, had previously said he "flew through" an initial questionnaire ahead of the trial.
The questionnaire had specifically asked: “Have you or a friend or family member ever been the victim of sexual harassment, sexual abuse, or sexual assault?”
He said he would have answered honestly about his history of being sexually abused if he had been asked about it during follow-up questioning.
David acknowledged that he had shared his experience of past sexual abuse with his fellow jurors after some expressed doubts over the credibility of two women who testified that they had been groomed by Maxwell for sex with Epstein when they were teenagers.
“When I shared that, they were able to sort of come around on, they were able to come around on the memory aspect of the sexual abuse,” he told Reuters.
On Jan. 10, the U.S. government said it would be willing to dismiss two perjury charges against Maxwell if her sex abuse conviction was allowed to stand.
The offer was made in a joint letter to Nathan from prosecutors and Maxwell’s defense team.
Prosecutors said that dismissing the perjury counts would be in line with victims’ “significant interests in bringing closure to this matter and avoiding the trauma of testifying again.”
They had also asked Nathan to sentence Maxwell in around three to four months' time — a request that the socialite's lawyers opposed, citing the possibility that the juror's account could be grounds for a retrial.
On Friday, Nathan proceeded with scheduling Maxwell's sentencing hearing for the morning of June 28.
Epstein, a financier and convicted sex offender who was a close confidant of Maxwell, killed himself in August 2019 in a New York City jail cell while awaiting his own trial on sex abuse charges.
