The judge who oversaw the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell has ordered an inquiry into whether a juror hid his history of sexual abuse.
On Thursday, Judge Alison Nathan ordered Juror 50 to “give testimony under oath in response to the Court’s questions” at a hearing on 8 March. Juror 50 has previously spoken to the press under the name Scotty David, revealing he had personally suffered sexual abuse as a child – something Maxwell’s lawyers say he did not disclose during jury selection.
In her order, Judge Nathan said the court would get to the bottom of this by questioning Mr David.
“The Court concludes, and the Government concedes, that the demanding standard for holding a post-verdict evidentiary hearing is met as to whether Juror 50 failed to respond truthfully during the jury selection process to whether he was a victim of sexual abuse,” Ms Nathan wrote. “Following trial, Juror 50 made several direct, unambiguous statements to multiple media outlets about his own experience that do not pertain to jury deliberations and that cast doubt on the accuracy of his responses during jury selection.”
In December, Maxwell was found guilty of five charges related to trafficking teenage girls for her former boyfriend, the deceased sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.
On Thursday, Judge Nathan made it clear that Mr David’s history of sexual abuse did not disqualify him as a juror. The question, she said, is whether he revealed that history when he was required to do so.
“To be clear, the potential impropriety is not that someone with a history of sexual abuse may have served on the jury,” the judge wrote. “Rather, it is the potential failure to respond truthfully to questions during the jury selection process that asked for that material information so that any potential bias could be explored.”
Lawyers for Maxwell have publicly accused Mr David of not truthfully answering pre-trial questions. In an 8 February letter to Judge Nathan, they said this “corrupted” the process and necessitated a new trial.
“Juror 50’s responses to the jury questionnaire and questions posed to him during in-person voir dire [jury selection] corrupted the voir dire process and violated Ms Maxwell’s right to a fair trial,” attorney Christian Everdell wrote. “As set forth in the Motion, the defense believes that the existing record is clear and more than sufficient for the Court to grant Ms Maxwell a new trial without the need for further factual development.”
However, when the defence later issued its motion for a retrial, it made no mention of Juror 50. The lawyers’ memo argued that Maxwell’s trial was unfair for a number of reasons, including that the charges were brought too late, many of the alleged sex acts took place outside of New York, and the conspiracy charges overlapped, and therefore should not count as separate crimes. But it did not discuss Mr David or the jury selection process.
At the time, some observers thought this indicated he’d done nothing wrong.
“It seems safe to assume that he [Scotty David] never misled anybody,” Law360 reporter Lucia Osborne-Crowley tweeted. “But the defence team got everybody to attack him and blame him anyway.”
The court has not accused Mr David of any wrongdoing. He will appear for questioning at the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse on 8 March.
