Beautiful Virgin Islands

Monday, Oct 06, 2025

Ghislaine Maxwell: key juror has hired lawyer, trial judge says

Ghislaine Maxwell: key juror has hired lawyer, trial judge says

Maxwell’s lawyers say they will request retrial after unidentified juror told reporters he was sexually abused as a child
A juror who sat at the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell last month and has now told reporters he was sexually abused as a child has retained a lawyer, the trial judge said on Thursday.

The unidentified juror’s public interviews led defense lawyers in the case to say they will request a new trial.

US district judge Alison Nathan asked them to formally do so by 19 January.

In an order on Thursday, Judge Nathan said the juror’s retained lawyer, Todd Spodek, had informed her that the juror did not want the court to appoint a lawyer for him as she had offered. Spodek is well known in the New York legal world, including representing Anna Sorokin, who once posed as a foreign heiress to infiltrate Manhattan’s elite social circles.

Spodek did not immediately return a request for comment.

The revelations by the juror in interviews published by two British publications this week threatened to upend the guilty verdicts returned against Maxwell just seven days ago on sex trafficking and conspiracy charges, among others.

Maxwell, the daughter of the late press baron Robert Maxwell, was found guilty of sex trafficking in her Manhattan federal court trial last Wednesday afternoon.

Ghislaine Maxwell, 60, was arrested in July 2020 and has been in custody ever since, despite repeated arguments from her lawyers that she was being mistreated behind bars in federal detention in Brooklyn, and would not try to flee if released on bail.

She was charged with involvement in the crimes of her ex-boyfriend and financier, the late Jeffrey Epstein, who was a convicted sex offender and killed himself in a New York jail in 2019 as he was awaiting trial on further sex abuse charges involving girls as young as 14.

The verdict against Maxwell was unanimous. She faces up to 65 years in prison, with the date of her sentencing yet to be announced.

In the interviews the juror gave, the panelist said he revealed to other jurors during weeklong deliberations that he was sexually abused as a child, and he said the information helped him convince some jurors that a victim’s imperfect memory of sexual abuse does not mean it did not happen.

Memories and how they relate to sexual abuse victims were a contentious point among attorneys during the trial as each side summoned a memory expert to testify.

During deliberations, the jury requested transcripts of the testimony by the defense’s memory expert, who said memories can be corroded over time by outside influences and general decay.

In the end, the jurors concluded unanimously that Maxwell was guilty of recruiting teenage girls between 1994 and 2004 for Epstein to sexually abuse.

After she read the verdicts out in court, Nathan then asked jurors publicly whether they were unanimous and a microphone was passed from juror to juror, who all agreed that it was.

Jurors were told they were free to express themselves freely and the man in question gave media interviews.

On Wednesday, Maxwell’s lawyers called for a retrial after it was announced that the prosecutors in the case had asked Nathan to investigate the juror’s remarks.

“Assuming the accuracy of the reporting, the juror asserted that he ‘flew through’ the prospective juror questionnaire and does not recall being asked whether he had been a victim of sexual abuse, but stated that ‘he would have answered honestly’. Based on the foregoing, the government believes the court should conduct an inquiry,” the prosecutors wrote to Nathan.

The juror’s claim that he did not recall being asked about sexual abuse has spurred questions, given that prospective jurors were given a questionnaire which directly asked them about this topic, and the court will now be examining this aspect. Prosecutors asked for a hearing.

Separately, the civil case is continuing between Britain’s Prince Andrew and a victim of Epstein, Virginia Giuffre, who claims she was coerced by Maxwell and Epstein into having sex against her will with Andrew, who is also the Duke of York and the second son of Queen Elizabeth. Andrew has denied all the allegations against him and is trying to persuade the New York judge in the case to dismiss Giuffre’s lawsuit.

Giuffre was not a witness in Maxwell’s trial.
Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
FBI Removes Agents Who Kneeled at 2020 Protest, Citing Breach of Professional Conduct
Trump Alleges ‘Triple Sabotage’ at United Nations After Escalator and Teleprompter Failures
Shock in France: 5 Years in Prison for Former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
BNP Paribas Abandons Ban on 'Controversial Weapons' Financing Amid Europe’s Defence Push
Typhoon Ragasa Leaves Trail of Destruction Across East Asia Before Making Landfall in China
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Big Banks Rebuild in Hong Kong as Deal Volume Surges
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Arnault Denounces Proposed Wealth Tax as Threat to French Economy
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Denmark Investigates Drone Incursion, Does Not Rule Out Russian Involvement
Lilly CEO Warns UK Is ‘Worst Country in Europe’ for Drug Prices, Pulls Back Investment
Nigel Farage Emerges as Central Force in British Politics with Reform UK Surge
Disney Reinstates ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after Six-Day Suspension over Charlie Kirk Comments
U.S. Prosecutors Move to Break Up Google’s Advertising Monopoly
×