NEW YORK — A juror told a judge Tuesday that failing to disclose his child abuse history during jury selection at the trial of British …
NEW YORK — A juror told a judge Tuesday that failing to disclose his child abuse history during jury selection at the trial of British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was one of the biggest mistakes of his life — but an unintentional one. «I didn’t lie in order to get on this jury,» the juror said. A U.S. judge questioned the juror extensively as part of an effort to decide whether the revelation about his personal history as a sex abuse survivor will spoil the verdict in the sex trafficking trial. Lawyers for Maxwell — who was present in the courtroom, clad in a dark blue jail smock — say the verdict should be thrown out. Maxwell’s lawyers potentially could have objected to the man’s presence on the jury on the grounds that he might not be fair to a person accused of a similar crime. Maxwell,60, was convicted in late December of helping financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse multiple teenage girls from 1994 to 2004. Sitting in a courtroom witness box, the juror repeatedly expressed regret as U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan asked him dozens of questions about why he didn’t reveal repeated incidents of sexual abuse at age 9 and 10 by two people on a questionnaire during the jury selection process.
