Ghislaine Maxwell claims ‘fatal errors’ led to her sex trafficking conviction

Convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has said a series of “fatal” errors led to her conviction.

She claims the errors were made during the Manhattan federal court case by prosecutors and the judge.

On Tuesday (February 28) Arthur Aidala, Maxwell’s lawyer, claimed she had been prosecuted as a “proxy” for the crimes of dead paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

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He claimed Maxwell had served as a fall person to “satisfy public outrage” about the crimes of Epstein who died in prison.

Maxwell was convicted in December of 2021 on five out of six counts brought against her.

Among them was a conviction for the sex trafficking of minors as she worked with Epstein, procuring young women and girls for him to molest and abuse.

Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year jail sentence.

However, Mr Aidala now claims on behalf of his client that the government and prosecutors had worked together “to develop new allegations out of faded, distorted, and motivated memories”.

A second attorney acting on behalf of Maxwell, John Leventhal, has broken down the five key elements of the appeal.

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He said it would focus on five key areas: “Pertaining to statute of limitations; a non-prosecutions agreement; juror misconduct and a post-verdict hearing; and sentence.”

Mr Aidala has since expanded on this, writing: “The Government breached a non-prosecution agreement that immunized Ms Maxwell for these offences.

“That agreement was entered into by the Government and Epstein in 2007, and, by its terms, unambiguously barred this prosecution, in the first instance.”

Among the issues surrounding the case, one juror admitted after the trial that he had been abused as a child – information he did not disclose during the pre-trial jury selection.

This initially caused concern that the conviction could have been thrown out but it was upheld by the presiding Judge Alison Nathan.

This alleged juror misconduct is now expected to be raised by representatives of Maxwell at the hearing.

He continued in his statement: “Ms Maxwell was denied her right to be tried by a fair and impartial jury when a juror revealed that he gave made materially false statements in jury selection that concealed that he had experienced the ‘exact same thing’ as the victims, namely, childhood sexual abuse.

“To compound the error, during jury deliberations, he used his undisclosed prior experience to convince other jurors that the defendant was guilty.”

An oral argument for the hearing is yet to be arranged.

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