Ghislaine Maxwell Convicted Of Sex Trafficking
Likely To Face 235 - 293 Months Imprisonment
After a three week trial and five days of deliberation, the Ghislaine Maxwell jury today found her guilty on five (out of six) counts of sex trafficking, conspiracy and interstate travel for purpose of criminal sex with minors. After today’s conviction, it is unlikely that she will ever step foot outside of jail as a free woman. Under the United States Sentencing Guidelines, I expect that she will face a presumptive sentence of 235-293 months (19 - 24 years). For a 60 year old, that would be tantamount to a death sentence.
Here are my thoughts:
This is a Good Day for the Good Guys
Today’s verdict is a victory for justice. It is the product of a lot of hard work by many victims, reporters and prosecutors, who had to overcome the travesty of the original Non-Prosecution Agreement that Jeffrey Epstein received from the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida in 2007.
Epstein’s victims were outraged by the joke of a sentence that he received in 2007: 13 months in “jail” - except he was allowed to spend each weekday at his palatial office and each weekend he was furloughed to he Palm Beach mansion. That deal was negotiated by then-US Attorney R. Alex Acosta, who resigned under fire as Donald Trump’s Secretary of Labor for his role in the Epstein case. (Disclosure: I attended law school with Acosta and was a friendly acquaintance of his until I learned the details of this case).
From 2007 until 2017, Epstein’s victims pursued justice, to no avail. Things began to change when Julie Brown, a reporter for the Miami Herald, engaged in deep reporting of the case — obtaining detailed interviews with many of Epstein’s victims. In early 2018, the Miami Herald published Brown’s three-part series laying out the crimes and cover-up in detail. In February 2019, a federal judge ruled that Acosta and his AUSAs violated federal law in entering into the Non-Prosecution Agreement with Epstein without giving notice to his victims. A few months later, in July 2019, Epstein was arrested on an indictment obtained by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
In August 2019, Epstein was found dead in his jail cell, while awaiting trial and it seemed as if his accusers would never get their day in court. Epstein’s death was ruled a suicide. Two guards were prosecuted for falsifying records saying that they had checked on him the night he died. They pled guilty and served no jail time. Most people thought that the case would die with Epstein.
The SDNY prosecutors and FBI agents did not drop their investigation of Epstein and his partner-in-crime, Ghislaine Maxwell. They obtained a sealed indictment and, in July 2020, arrested Maxwell in New Hampshire, where she was living under a pseudonym. Literally thousands of hours were spent by the agents and AUSAs to bring the case to trial.
The Prosecutors Were Vindicated In Their “Keep It Simple” Strategy
At trial, the prosecutors kept a narrow focus on the four victims described (but not named) in the indictment, and did not allow the case to become entangled in the famous names tied to Epstein and Maxwell (such as Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Les Wexner, Bill Gates, etc.) During trial, many criticized the prosecutors for their narrow focus, short opening statement and resting their case after only two weeks. I thought that the prosecutors had it just right, as reported by Adam Klasfeld in Law & Crime News:
“I think that the prosecution is doing a very good job of trying this case in order to try to convict Ghislaine Maxwell,” said Epner, who is now of counsel with the firm Rottenberg Lipman Rich PC. “And I think the people who are disappointed with the way this trial is going do not understand that this is a trial, not an inquest.”
The danger for the prosecution was falling into the trap that ensnared the OJ Simpson prosecutors: undercutting their claim that the case was simple by taking months to present it. They avoided using witnesses (such as Virginia Giuffre Roberts) who had been instrumental in keeping the case alive from 2007 - 2018, but would have brought much baggage to the case because their stories had shifted over the years. Instead, they only presented victim-witnesses whose accounts could be corroborated by accounts of their abuse that they had provided long before Epstein or Maxwell were arrested in 2019 & 2020.
Maxwell Likely Is Never Leaving Jail Alive
Although press accounts will report that Maxwell faces “up to” 65 years in jail, that is not the way federal sentencing works. Federal judges do not determine a sentence by stacking the maximum penalties on top of each other. Rather, federal judges are required to consider the United States Sentencing Guidelines, which provide a range of sentencing terms based upon the counts of conviction and other factors. Those Sentencing Guidelines likely lead to (essentially) a life sentence for Maxwell.
Here, the relevant Sentencing Guideline is Section 2G1.3. Based on the five counts of conviction, the number and ages of the victims, and the fact that Epstein and Maxwell used minors to lure other minors into sex-for-pay, I believe that Judge Nathan will find that the applicable guideline range is 235 - 293 months (20 - 24 years). Specifically, I expect that the judge will find that Maxwell has a criminal offense level of 38 and a criminal history category of I.
At age 60, a 20+ year sentence would mean that Maxwell would never emerge from prison alive.
At sentencing, it is likely that Maxwell’s attorneys will try to reduce the sentence by fighting on at least two issues. (1) Does Maxwell deserve a two-point reduction in her offense level because she played a “minor role” in the offense? and (2) Should Maxwell be assessed the two-point upward adjustment for using minors to recruit minors? Even if Judge Nathan rules in favor of Maxwell on both issues (and I believe that she will not (and should not)), Maxwell would still be subject to a presumptive sentence of 151 - 188 months (12 - 15 years). Even with credit for the 15 months that Maxwell has already served, she likely would not emerge from jail before she turned 71 - 74. Again, this would be death by jail for her.
Judge Nathan will likely set a sentencing hearing for about 3 months from now. In the interim, the Probation Office will prepare a Pre-Sentence Report and the prosecutors and defense will submit arguments about the appropriate sentence. At her sentencing hearing, Ghislaine Maxwell will have the opportunity (but not the obligation) to speak.
Will she speak?
If she does, will she continue to maintain her innocence?
Will she try to explain her inexplicable choice to join Jeffrey Epstein in committing decades of abhorrent crimes against children?
Only time will tell.
The prosecution of Maxwell and Epstein was a disturbing politicization of the criminal justice system. Epstein entered a plea regarding his conduct in 2008. That plea stood for 10 years, until incendiary presidential politics made it newly relevant. Everything that President Trump touched became the target of establishment vitriol. He appointed Acosta, so Acosta of course became the focus of Trump derangement syndrome, and as a result Acosta’s Epstein plea — dormant for 10 years — became the target of new scrutiny, feeding the narrative of monsters, appointing monsters, excusing monsters. It was a wonderful case to re-litigate to score political points. Often overlooked, is that despite Epstein’s alleged continuing sexual perversions, his 2019 indictment was based entirely on conduct that allegedly occurred between 2002 and 2005. And Maxwell’s 2020 indictment concerned conduct occurring only between 1994 and 1997 - more than 20 years prior to the indictment and an extraordinary passage of time for this type of case. Somewhat odd that recidivist sexual predators — especially ones with global profiles — engaged in no alleged illegal conduct for several decades.
Epstein and Maxwell are easy to demonize — and may actually be demons — but anybody caring about the politicization of our criminal justice system should be concerned that acrimonious Presidential politics led directly to jettisoning a prior plea deal, which led to new charges based on ancient evidence that had been in the public realm for decades. It is troubling that all available evidence suggests that if Hillary had won in 2016, or if Trump had appointed Eugene Scalia to Labor in the first place, Epstein and Maxwell would likely still be alive and free.