On April 1, 2022, Judge Alison Nathan found that convicted sex-trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell — who was a close associate of accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who died in a New York jail on August 10, 2019 of an apparent suicide (via The New York Times) — was not entitled to a second trial. Judge Nathan did not believe a juror’s failure to report being sexually abused on a questionnaire made a difference in the verdict, according to CNN.
In the opinion, Judge Nathan wrote that the “lack of attention and care in responding accurately to every question on the questionnaire is regrettable, but the Court is confident that the failure to disclose was not deliberate,” and that a guilty verdict could only be overturned “in the most extraordinary of circumstances.”
When the judge questioned the juror in court in early March, he said that he was unfocused when filling out the questionnaire and answered the question incorrectly about whether he had ever been sexually abused. With the mistrial denied, as of this writing, Maxwell is scheduled to be sentenced in June.
