Maxwell juror apologizes for not reporting he was abused. Judge to rule if conviction stands
A juror in the Ghislaine Maxwell sex trafficking trial admitted in federal court Tuesday that he inaccurately answered his jury questionnaire, but that his answer denying he had been a victim of sexual abuse was an honest mistake — and not an attempt to get on the jury.
More than two months after Maxwell was found guilty on five counts related to the sex trafficking of minors, the jury’s verdict has now come under the microscope, with the possibility that the panel’s decision could be thrown out and Maxwell could get a new trial.
Juror 50, also known as “Scotty David,” gave media interviews after the verdict, boasting that he helped jurors understand the nature of sexual assault allegations, telling them that he had been sexually abused as a child. However, he didn’t reveal that fact during jury selection, even thought he was tasked with filling out a questionnaire that asked him whether he or someone close to him was a victim of sexual assault. He checked “no” to the question.
Had he been truthful, Maxwell’s lawyers would likely have excluded him from the jury pool. Now they are using it as a mechanism to get a new trial for the 60-year-old British socialite who remains in prison after being convicted on charges she helped recruit young girls to be abused by sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
It is against the law to lie on the questionnaire, and Juror 50 indicated that, if questioned under oath, he would plead his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. However, prior to the hearing Tuesday in New York, U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan agreed to give him immunity if he answered his questions truthfully.
The juror said that he did not lie or intentionally mislead the court, calling it “one of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made in my life,” and insisting that he merely “skimmed” the questions and didn’t really read them carefully. He said he didn’t expect to be selected, and was distracted, in part because he had just gone through a recent breakup.
The juror told the judge he had been repeatedly sexually abused at age 9 and 10, but that he had rarely spoken about the abuse. He said the bravery of the victims who testified during the trial inspired him to talk about it to the other jurors.
Nathan was clearly skeptical of the juror’s motives, particularly since he was so public about his past abuse after the trial, giving several media interviews in which he claimed he helped jurors understand why child sexual assault victims often don’t report the abuse until they are adults.
The judge gave lawyers in the case until March 15 to submit legal briefs on whether the verdict should be set aside. Maxwell’s sentencing is scheduled for June. She faces the prospect of decades behind bars if her current convictions, which include one charge of sex trafficking of a minor, stand.
Experts say that case law is in the prosecutors’ favor, because in order to get a new trial as a result of the juror’s false answer on the questionnaire, Maxwell’s lawyers will have to show that the juror intentionally lied to get on the jury.
“From what the juror said, there was no deliberate attempt to get on the jury to try to influence it,’’ said Sarah Krissoff, a former federal prosecutor with the Southern District of New York. “The cases I’ve seen where courts have awarded a new trial are cases where there is blatant misconduct to get on a jury.”
But that doesn’t mean Maxwell’s team won’t push for Nathan to probe other jurors about the impact of the juror’s presence on the panel, said David S. Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor with the Southern District of Florida.
“There could be a part two to this,” he said.
Krissoff, now a criminal defense lawyer, said that either way the judge decides, the decision will likely be appealed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. While federal prosecutors typically can’t appeal cases they lose, they can appeal convictions that were overturned after trial. Ironically, Nathan was recently nominated by President Joe Biden to be elevated to that appeals court.
If a new trial is granted, it will present a whole new set of challenges for the SDNY prosecutors.
“A real concern will be that the victims can’t or won’t go through it again. Prosecutors aren’t going to force a victim to testify. This is a very challenging case because the events happened so long ago and it was a very tough case to try. Having to do it again would be very hard for the victims,’’ Krissoff said.
Those challenges are why it would be to Maxwell’s advantage to win a new trial even though federal prosecutors secured convictions on five of six counts during the first trial, said Jill Steinberg, a former federal prosecutor in the Northern District of Georgia and Department of Justice official who focused on child exploitation cases.
“Cases are not like wine. They do not get better with time,” she said.
Maxwell was convicted of recruiting and grooming four girls for the abuse of her ex-boyfriend, deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein at Epstein’s mansions in New York and Florida, his ranch in New Mexico and Maxwell’s London home. She was arrested in July 2020, one year after Epstein was arrested on similar sex trafficking charges in New York. He died in federal custody one month later in what has been ruled a suicide.
Epstein escaped federal prosecution more than a decade earlier after being investigated for abusing numerous girls at his Palm Beach mansion. He struck a deal with federal prosecutors in South Florida that allowed him to plead guilty to two state solicitation charges, one involving a minor. He would ultimately serve only 13 months in a county jail and was allowed to work from a Palm Beach office during the day. His lenient sentence was the subject of the Miami Herald’s 2018 Perversion of Justice series.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
This story was originally published March 8, 2022 at 3:31 PM.
