Federal judge declines Maxwell bid to toss conviction

A federal judge on Tuesday declined a petition from Ghislaine Maxwell to set aside her conviction, a long-shot bid that would have allowed for a new trial.

Maxwell represented herself in the habeas petition challenging her detention that she filed last December.

New York-based U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer noted Maxwell had previously been “represented by able counsel” but did not use her attorney to file what the jurist described as “a lengthy and rambling petition” that did little to open new avenues for her defense.

The judge also said the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA), the law passed by Congress mandating the release of millions of files collected by the Justice Department on Maxwell’s late associate, Jeffrey Epstein, did not support her claims of innocence.

“Maxwell’s claims are all meritless and all or almost all are frivolous. The vast majority are procedurally barred — either because Maxwell made and lost the same arguments on direct appeal, or because she could have made such arguments on appeal but elected not to do so.” Engelmayer wrote.

“And the purported ‘new’ evidence to which Maxwell points, principally materials released under the EFTA, is largely irrelevant to the charges against Maxwell and does not support her claims of error. On the contrary, to the extent it is relevant, far from exculpating her, it incriminates her or reinforces the correctness of the legal rulings Maxwell challenges.”

Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence after she was found guilty of conspiring with and aiding Epstein in his sexual abuse of underage girls.

When she filed the December petition, Maxwell said the new evidence was derived from litigation against the FBI, financial institutions and Epstein’s estate, in addition to sworn depositions, released records and other “verified sources” that show evidence suggesting her innocence was “withheld,” “false testimony” was presented and “material facts” were “misrepresented” to her jury and the court.

Her claims included alleged juror misconduct, mischaracterizations of evidence, private attorneys functioning as de facto prosecutors and the decades-long delay between her alleged conduct and indictment.

“The cumulative effect of these constitutional violations constitutes a complete miscarriage of justice, rendering Petitioner’s conviction invalid, unsafe and infirm,” Maxwell wrote at the time.

Maxwell has exhausted all of her direct appeals, something Engelmayer nodded to in the ruling, noting that an appeals court upheld her conviction and that the Supreme Court declined to review her case.