OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
5:32 PM – Monday, November 25, 2024
Ghislaine Maxwell, British socialite and ex-accomplice to pedophile sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, attempted to have the ruling maintaining her conviction overturned by a U.S. appellate court, but she was denied.
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The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan refused Maxwell’s request for an en banc review—a review of her case by all of the court’s current judges—in a ruling issued on Monday.
On September 17th, a three-judge bench denied multiple motions to overturn her 2021 conviction. Although the U.S. Supreme Court is not obligated to hear her case, Maxwell, 62, reportedly intends to appeal.
She is eligible for release in July 2037 after completing a 20-year term at a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida.
In an email, Maxwell’s attorney, Arthur Aidala, expressed his disappointment with Monday’s ruling and his “cautiously optimistic” belief that the Supreme Court would consider her appeal.
Maxwell was previously found guilty on five charges of recruiting and grooming underage girls for abuse by her now deceased ex-boyfriend, Epstein, between 1994 and 2004.
The appeals court upheld her conviction, citing the trial judge’s conclusion that Maxwell was instrumental in enabling abuse that resulted in “significant and lasting harm.”
Additionally, it dismissed Maxwell’s argument that Epstein was protected from prosecution in New York by her 2007 non-prosecution deal with federal prosecutors in southern Florida, which resulted in a guilty plea on state prostitution charges in 2008.
In their request for en banc review, Maxwell’s counsel sought the 2nd Circuit to reverse a 1985 decision that stated “that plea agreements bound only U.S. attorneys in districts where they are entered, unless it appeared that broader restrictions were contemplated,” Newsmax reported.
The attorneys claimed that the result “stands in tension” with two Supreme Court rulings pertaining to plea and immunity agreements and was inconsistent with decisions made by other federal appellate courts.
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