MANHATTAN (CN) — Lawyers for British heiress Ghislaine Maxwell asked a federal appeals panel on Tuesday afternoon to release her from her 20-year prison sentence on her conviction for trafficking girls to her longtime companion, pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, for sexual abuse.
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 say a co-conspirators clause in Epstein’s lenient 2007 deal with Florida prosecutors should have prohibited Maxwell from ever being charged.
“Denying the viability of this plea agreement strikes a dagger in the heart of the trust between government and its citizens regarding plea agreements," Maxwell's attorney Diana Fabi Samson said during brief oral arguments on Tuesday.
Maxwell argued in her appeal brief that the absence of the phrase “in this district” from the co-conspirator immunity provision of Epstein’s plea deal “compels the inference that the parties did not intend to so limit its reach.”
U.S. Circuit Judge Raymond Lohier told Maxwell’s lawyer that his review of the Department of Justice’s manual on plea agreements was the “the direct opposite” of her argument.
“The presumption is that a United States Attorney cannot bind any other office except his or her own office,” the Obama-appointed judge interjected.
“As I understand it, you also have the burden to show that the Southern District of New York is bound by the NPA,” he added.
On Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Rohrbach countered Maxwell’s claim that the nonprosecution agreement should apply globally, and argued that the deal only binds with the Southern District of Florida.
“The phrase ‘United States’ in a plea agreement like this is just a generic reference to the U.S. Attorney’s office that enters into the agreement and is not on its own enough to establish an affirmative appearance,” he told the appeals panel.
The Department of Justice argued in an appeal brief that Maxwell has 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 onto her.
Lohier was joined on the panel by U.S. Circuit Judge Cabranes, a Clinton appointee, and U.S. Circuit Judge Richard Wesley, a George W. Bush appointee.
The panel did not rule from the bench on Maxwell’s appeal.
Under the terms of the federal nonprosecution agreement Epstein pleaded guilty to lesser state charges of soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution, averting a possible life sentence and instead serving 13 months in a work-release program that allowed him to leave his cell for most of the day to spend time in a West Palm Beach office.
He was required to make payments to victims and register as a sex offender.
The document’s co-conspirator provision mentions Epstein staffers Sarah Kellen, Nadia Marcinkova and Lesley Groff by name, but not Maxwell.
The allegations against Epstein first surfaced in 2005. The FBI and local Florida police had, at the time, amassed evidence of sexual misconduct with many underage girls.
In pretrial motions before Maxwell’s December 2021 trial in the Southern District of New York, U.S. Judge Alison Nathan rejected her defense’s argument that the nonprosecution agreement shielded her against criminal indictment because she was charged as a co-conspirator of Epstein and the deal’s co-conspirator provision lacks any geographical or temporal limitations.
“The NPA does not purport to immunize Epstein from liability for crimes committed before the period that was the subject of the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office investigation,” Nathan wrote, ruling that that nonprosecution agreement does not bind for the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and that it does not cover the offenses charged in Maxwell’s first superseding indictment. “Maxwell’s protection is no broader.”
Before Epstein killed himself in August 2019 while awaiting trial, his lawyers also argued that the deal would have prohibited him from being charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York for alleged sex trafficking of girls from 2002 through 2005.
Federal prosecutors disputed that claim, but the issue remained unresolved after Epstein’s jail cell death.
Shortly after Epstein’s arrest in July 2019, Alexander Acosta, who helped craft the plea deal as then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, resigned as President Trump’s secretary of labor under a cloud of renewed criticism spotlighting his role in the purported sweetheart deal.
A report from the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility later that year, which probed Acosta’s decision to end the 2006–2008 federal criminal investigation in Florida, found that he exhibited “poor judgment” in his handling of a generous plea deal for Jeffrey Epstein in 2007 but did not commit professional misconduct.
Maxwell was arrested in New Hampshire in July 2020, nearly a year to the day that sex-trafficking charges landed Epstein, with whom she was once romantically linked, in the jail cell where he would be found dead one month later.
Federal prosecutors said Epstein could not have abused as many vulnerable girls and young women for over a decade without the aid of Maxwell, his longtime companion who recruited the girls and groomed them for a pattern of escalating roles in sex acts.
She is currently serving out a 20-year sentence at a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida.
Follow @jruss_jruss
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
Additional Reads
-
Hunter Biden appeals April 12, 2024 -
