Ghislaine Maxwell asked a federal appeals court on Tuesday to overturn her sex trafficking conviction and 20-year prison sentence for helping Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse underage girls for more than a decade.
The infamous socialite, 61, claims that she was not given a fair trial in part because one of the jurors did not announce his own history of sexual abuse during the jury selection process.
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“Irrespective of whether the juror’s false statements were intentional, which they clearly were, the similarities between the traumatic experiences described by the juror and the victims in the case, together with the juror’s public statements, established the juror’s bias,” Maxwell’s appellate brief said, per ABC News.
According to the news outlet, Maxwell’s attorneys also argued that prosecutors waited too long to indict her, and by doing so, revived allegations from decades before that were previously blamed on Epstein. The defense has long argued that her case has acted as a proxy trial for Epstein, who never had a trial because he died in prison, ruled a suicide.
Furthermore, Maxwell’s attorneys claim their client couldn’t “meaningfully assist” in court because the detention center where she awaited trial left her sleep deprived and exhausted, per the Daily Mail.
Maxwell was found guilty of sex trafficking in December 2021 and sentenced to 20 years in prison in June 2022. She was found guilty on five counts, including “transporting a minor for the purposes of criminal sexual activity,” “conspiring to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts,” and perjury related to statements she made in 2016.
Prosecutors pushed for a longer sentence, between 30 and 55 years, while Maxwell’s defense attorneys asked for something shorter, explicitly noting the “onerous and punitive” conditions she lived in, as well as the extensive isolation, the physical search, and “credible” death threats.
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Epstein was arrested in July 2019 and charged with sex trafficking and conspiracy for allegedly abusing girls as young as 14. He pleaded not guilty to the charges before being found dead in his Manhattan prison cell in August 2019. His death at 66 was ruled a suicide by the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office.
Maxwell said meeting the millionaire was the “biggest regret” of her life.
