Ghislaine Maxwell has launched an appeal against her conviction for helping disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls.
In a filing with the 2nd US Circuit of Appeals in Manhattan, Maxwell has said that if her conviction is not overturned then she should get a new trial or be re-sentenced.
Earlier in the week, her lawyer Arthur Aidala said prosecutors had targeted Maxwell as a “proxy” for Jeffrey Epstein and to satisfy “public outrage” over the case.
He also said prosecutors had worked with Epstein’s accusers to “develop new allegations out of faded, distorted and motivated memories”.
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In her appeal Maxwell, 61, has claimed she was protected by a 2007 non-prosecution agreement made between federal prosecutors in southern Florida and Epstein regarding alleged abuse at his Palm Beach mansion.
She also claimed that she was charged long after the expiration of a five-year statute of limitations, and that a juror who failed to disclose before the trial that he had been sexually abused as a child had used his experience to sway other jurors.
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And she contends that the trial judge refused to correct jurors’ “misunderstanding” about the case, improperly giving them an alternative basis on which to convict her.
Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence in a Florida prison after being convicted on five counts of recruiting and grooming four girls for abuse by Epstein between 1994 and 2004.
Epstein was found dead in his jail cell in 2019 at the age of 66, one month after being charged with sex trafficking.
