The Department of Justice on Monday urged the Supreme Court to turn away an appeal from Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence.
The Department of Justice on Monday urged the Supreme Court to turn away an appeal from Ghislaine Maxwell, the former associate of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for conspiring with and aiding Epstein in his sexual abuse of underage girls.
Maxwell, 63, had urged the court earlier this year to review her case, arguing that an unusual co-conspirator’s clause in Epstein’s 2007 non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors in Florida barred her subsequent prosecution in New York. A district court and a federal appeals court previously rejected that argument, and the DOJ today urged the high court to do the same.
„That contention is incorrect, and petitioner does not show that it would succeed in any court of appeals“, wrote U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer.
At the core of Maxwell’s petition for SCOTUS review is her contention that the language of Epstein’s non-prosecution agreement (NPA) specifically limited his protection to the Southern District of Florida, whereas the language of the co-conspirator clause should have been read to prohibit her prosecution in any federal district.
The co-conspirator clause stated that if „Epstein successfully fulfills all of the terms and conditions of this agreement, the United States also agrees that it will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein, including but not limited to“ four of Epstein’s assistants. Maxwell was not among the four women named.
„Despite the existence of a non-prosecution agreement promising in plain language that the United States would not prosecute any co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein, the United States in fact prosecuted Ghislaine Maxwell as a co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein“, her attorneys wrote in their petition to SCOTUS in April.
