Ghislaine Maxwell has lost her bid to overturn her sex trafficking conviction linked to helping the late Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse young girls.
US District Judge Alison Nathan in a written ruling on Friday upheld the British socialite’s guilty verdict on three of five counts including sex trafficking.
The jury’s verdict in December 2021 was backed by witness testimony as well as evidence in the trial, according to the judge.
Nathan rejected the guilty verdicts on two counts, which could possibly reduce Maxwell’s sentence. In addition, Nathan said that three of the charges covered the same offense and upheld only one among those guilty verdicts.
During the trial, the jury found Maxwell, 60, guilty of five of the six charges she faced.
Shortly after Maxwell was convicted on December 29, one of the jurors, Scotty David, revealed that he was sexually abused as a child and said that he used the experience to inform the jury during their deliberations.
Maxwell’s lawyers sought a retrial, raising that potential jurors were asked if they were sexual abuse survivors in a questionnaire. The juror had replied no.
David in March apologized to the judge for not disclosing the information, but on April 1, Nathan denied a retrial for Maxwell. On Friday, she turned down Maxwell’s motion to be acquitted.
Epstein, a convicted sex offender, died by suicide in his jail cell in Manhattan while waiting his sex trafficking trial in 2019.
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