MANHATTAN (CN) — A Second Circuit panel on Tuesday unanimously upheld Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal sex trafficking convictions, finding no errors in the lower court’s handling of pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein’s nonprosecution deal and other issues on appeal.
A Manhattan jury found the 62-year-old socialite guilty in December 2021 for her role in Epstein’s international sex trafficking operation following a monthlong trial, but on appeal to the Second Circuit two years later her attorneys argued a co-conspirators clause in Epstein’s lenient 2007 deal with Florida prosecutors should have prohibited Maxwell from ever being charged.
A three-judge panel on the Second Circuit was not persuaded to overturn Maxwell’s conviction based on Maxwell’s claims that Epstein’s deal barred New York prosecutors from bringing criminal charges against her.
“Nothing in the text of the nonprosecution agreement or its negotiation history suggests that the nonprosecution agreement precluded U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York from prosecuting Maxwell for the charges in the indictment,” Senior U.S. Circuit Judge José A. Cabranes wrote in the panel’s opinion, affirming the lower court’s denial of Maxwell’s motion to dismiss her indictment.
“There is nothing in the nonprosecution agreement that affirmatively shows that the nonprosecution agreement was intended to bind multiple districts,” Cabranes wrote later in the ruling. “Instead, where the nonprosecution agreement is not silent, the agreement’s scope is expressly limited to the Southern District of Florida. The nonprosecution agreement makes clear that if Epstein fulfilled his obligations, he would no longer face charges in that district.” (Italics in original)
Cabranes, a Bill Clinton appointee, was joined on the panel by U.S. Circuit Judges Richard Wesley, a George W. Bush appointee, and Raymond Lohier, a Barack Obama appointee.
The secretive deal, which was met with heavy criticism and litigation, let the now-deceased high-profile financier plead guilty in Florida to state charges of soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution. The sweetheart agreement also allowed Epstein to serve 13 months in a work-release program, make payments to victims and register as a sex offender instead of potentially serving a life sentence.
The Department of Justice argued in an appellate brief that Maxwell had no right to invoke the protections of the agreement because she wasn’t a signatory to the agreement and hadn’t sufficiently argued its protections were conferred to her.
The Second Circuit separately rejected Maxwell’s claim on appeal that counts three and four of her indictment were untimely because they were charged 15 years after the conduct. She had claimed the charges did not fall within the scope of offenses involving the sexual or physical abuse or kidnapping of a minor and thereby weren’t subject to the extended statute of limitations.
Maxwell was convicted in December 2021 on five of six criminal counts in connection with recruiting and grooming teenage girls for sexual abuse by Epstein, her onetime boyfriend.
The jury ultimately acquitted her on count 2, enticement of an individual under the age of 17 to travel with intent to engage in illegal sexual activity.
She is serving out her 20-year sentence in a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida. She is eligible for release in July 2037.