The reason it took the jury forty hours to find Ghislaine Maxwell guilty is a good one: They studied the evidence. Sentencing remains, as does the question of whether the defense will now try to cut a deal. In London they’re debating whether Ghislaine Maxwell will sing. Herewith, the takeaway.
Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty of five out of the six charges in her sex-trafficking trial, the jury found after some forty hours of deliberation. The verdicts were handed down toward the end of their sixth day of deliberations on December 29. Under quite direct urging earlier in the week by Judge Alison Nathan, who feared that the onmarch of the pandemic could delay the conclusion of the trial indefinitely, the jury delivered their unanimous verdict on the last day possible before the court recessed for the holiday weekend. “A unanimous jury has found Ghislaine Maxwell guilty of one of the worst crimes imaginable: facilitating and participating in the sexual abuse of children,” Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, stated, “crimes that she committed with her long-time partner and co-conspirator, Jeffrey Epstein.” He added: “The road to justice has been far too long. But, today, justice has been done. I want to commend the bravery of the girls, now grown women, who stepped out of the shadows and into the courtroom. Their courage and willingness to face their abuser made this case, and today’s result, possible.” It was not an unexpected outcome. In their presentation, Ms. Maxwell’s attorneys did not succeed in offering a full, detailed, fact-based counter-narrative to the government’s four main witnesses, all targeted victims of Epstein and Maxwell. Essentially, Maxwell’s well paid defense team were prevented from supplying an alternative narrative to that of the witnesses because there was none. Maxwell was on the planes, in the residences, at Epstein’s side, and in the young women’s lives. Her presence and knowledge was irrefutable, and her defenders didn’t challenge that. Instead, the defense was forced to rely on the tried-and-true strategy of challenging the witnesses veracity, memory and motives, as well as accusing the prosecution of showboating, as one defense attorney put it derisively, in a “tabloid” fashion.
