Ghislaine Maxwell’s attorneys have filed a motion for retrial, just weeks after she was found guilty of recruiting underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse.
In a court filing, the Briton’s lawyers said they had applied for a retrial after a juror allegedly failed to disclose they had been sexually abused as a child prior to the trial.
“For the reasons set forth in the Motion, we request that all submissions pertaining to Juror No 50 remain under seal until the Court rules on the Motion,” attorney Bobbi C Sternheim wrote in a letter to Judge Alison Nathan.
Maxwell, 60, was convicted last month of sex trafficking and other charges for recruiting and grooming underage girls for financier Jeffrey Epstein to abuse between 1994 and 2004. Epstein took his own life in 2019 in a New York jail while awaiting his own sex trafficking trial.
Days after the verdict, one of the jurors shared his experience of being abused as a child after other jurors expressed skepticism over the accounts of two of Maxwell’s accusers.
The revelations from the juror, named in media as Scotty David, raised concerns that he did not disclose his abuse during the pretrial screening period.
The process, known as voire dire, seeks to rule out candidates because of possible bias and allows both sides several “pre-emptory challenges” to exclude a juror they feel could be prejudiced.
Mr David claimed he “flew through” the questionnaire. He said he did not remember recall a question about personal experiences with sexual abuse, but would have answered honestly.
Earlier this month, Maxwell’s lawyers wrote to the judge claiming it “presents incontrovertible grounds for a new trial”.
The prosecution will have until February 2 to respond to the motion filed by Maxwell’s legal team.
Maxwell faces up to 65 years in prison for her conviction.
She also faces trial on two perjury counts or allegedly lying about her knowledge of Epstein’s behavior during a deposition for a civil case. The date of the perjury trial has not yet been set.
