For a lot of December, the 12 jurors arrived at a federal courthouse in Decrease Manhattan and listened intently to harrowing testimony that Ghislaine Maxwell had helped the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein recruit, groom and sexually abuse underage ladies.
And on Dec. 29, after discovering Ms. Maxwell, 60, responsible of 5 of the six counts she confronted, the jurors have been despatched house.
However on Tuesday morning, considered one of them, recognized as Juror 50, is ready to return to court docket, the place he has been ordered to testify below oath about whether or not he lied about his background through the jury choice course of.
The decide, Alison J. Nathan, has stated she’s going to query Juror 50 herself. Ms. Maxwell’s legal professionals and prosecutors every have been allowed to submit proposed questions prematurely.
The weird listening to was ordered by Choose Nathan after Ms. Maxwell’s legal professionals, citing post-trial interviews by Juror 50 with a number of information retailers, requested the decide to throw out the decision and grant Ms. Maxwell a brand new trial.
Perceive the Ghislaine Maxwell Trial
Juror 50 revealed within the interviews that through the jury’s deliberations, he advised different jurors that he had been the sufferer of childhood sexual abuse and didn’t report that abuse for years. In a single interview, he stated the jury room “went silent” as he associated his story, and he stated he helped different jurors perceive issues from a sufferer’s standpoint.
But it surely was the response Juror 50 gave to a query in a screening questionnaire — administered by the court docket through the choice course of — that has clouded the decision. It requested whether or not potential jurors had ever been the sufferer of sexual abuse.
Juror 50 checked a field answering “no.”
In in search of a brand new trial, Ms. Maxwell’s legal professionals advised the decide that Juror 50 “didn’t in truth reply to maybe crucial query put to potential jurors about their private experiences — a query that pertained on to the core allegations towards Ms. Maxwell: whether or not they had been a sufferer of sexual assault or abuse.”
“Had Juror No. 50 advised the reality,” her legal professionals argued, “he would have been challenged, and excluded, for trigger.”
In attempting to evaluate the affect of disclosures contained in the jury room, judges are barred from questioning jurors about what was stated throughout deliberations. However a decide can take a look at statements jurors made through the jury choice part.
“Following trial,” Choose Nathan wrote in an opinion final month, “Juror 50 made a number of direct, unambiguous statements to a number of media retailers about his personal expertise that don’t pertain to jury deliberations and that solid doubt on the accuracy of his responses” in jury choice.
The statements have been “clear, robust, substantial and incontrovertible proof” that an impropriety had occurred — “specifically, a false assertion throughout jury choice,” the decide stated.
She famous that the potential impropriety was not {that a} juror with a historical past of sexual abuse might need served on the jury.
“Somewhat,” she wrote, “it’s the potential failure to reply in truth to questions through the jury choice course of that requested for that materials info in order that any potential bias could possibly be explored.”
Paperwork made public final week in Federal District Court docket present that Juror 50 is predicted to testify with a grant of immunity from prosecution.
His lawyer, Todd A. Spodek, had written to the decide that Juror 50 deliberate to “invoke his Fifth Modification privilege towards self-incrimination on the listening to.”
On Monday night, the workplace of Damian Williams, the U.S. legal professional for the Southern District of New York, filed an software with Choose Nathan, saying it had obtained Justice Division approval to hunt an order compelling Juror 50’s testimony on the listening to and granting him immunity from prosecution in alternate.