Ghislaine Maxwell lost an appeal against her sex-trafficking conviction on Tuesday.
Maxwell, 62, has been serving a 20-year prison sentence after she was convicted in 2021 on five federal charges for having recruited and groomed four underage girls for the billionaire Jeffrey Epstein to abuse between 1994 and 2004.
The decision, issued by three judges sitting on the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, was unanimous.
Maxwell’s appeal focused on a 2008 “non-prosecution” agreement between Epstein, her former boyfriend, and federal prosecutors in southern Florida, which she said barred her from being prosecuted in New York 13 years later. However, the appeals judges ruled that the highly unusual “sweetheart deal” that Epstein struck to protect any “co-conspirators” of his crimes did not shield Maxwell.
Epstein was sentenced to 18 months on sex abuse charges in the Florida case. He later took his own life, aged 66, while awaiting trial in a separate case in New York.
The judges also rejected Maxwell’s motion for a new trial, after her lawyers argued that she was deprived of the “constitutional right to a fair and impartial jury” because it emerged one juror had failed to accurately disclose his own experience of sexual abuse.
The circuit court also concluded that the Briton’s 20-year sentence was “reasonable”, citing her “pivotal role” in facilitating the abuse by Epstein of underage girls through a series of “deceptive tactics”. The three judges agreed with a lower court decision that “a very serious, very significant sentence is necessary to achieve the purposes of punishment”.
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At the trial, four women testified that they had been abused as minors at Epstein’s homes in Florida, New York, New Mexico and the Virgin Islands. They recounted how Maxwell had talked them into giving Epstein massages that turned sexual, luring them with gifts and promises about how Epstein could use his money and connections to help them.
A judge rejected several attempts to throw out the case while the trial continued. Maxwell had claimed that prosecutors had made her a scapegoat because Epstein was dead and the public demanded someone else be held accountable.
Attorneys for the southern district of New York described Maxwell as having committed “one of the worst crimes imaginable”. Her family said at the time of her conviction that they were “profoundly shocked” by the outcome and were confident their appeal would succeed. Her siblings — fellow children of the late media proprietor and fraudster Robert Maxwell — have publicly supported their youngest sister throughout, and hired a new legal team to lead the appeal.
Epstein and Maxwell’s sex-trafficking activity was far-reaching. It stained by association or destroyed the reputations of former famous friends, including Prince Andrew and Jes Staley, the one-time chief executive of Barclays. Staley was banned last year from holding senior roles in the UK financial services industry after he misled regulators about his relationship with Epstein.
Maxwell has been serving her sentence in a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida. She is eligible for release in July 2037.
