U.S. court upholds British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell's sex trafficking conviction

Audrey Strauss, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, points to a photo of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, during a news conference in New York on July 2, 2020. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

NEW YORK -

A U.S. court on Tuesday upheld disgraced British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell's conviction on sex trafficking charges for helping the late financier Jeffrey Epstein abuse underage girls.

Maxwell's lawyers had argued that her convictions violated an agreement Epstein reached with federal prosecutors 15 years ago in which he agreed to plead guilty to sex crimes and his co-conspirators were granted immunity. The lawyers also said some of the charges were brought after the statute of limitations had expired, and alleged judicial errors during her trial and sentencing.

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But a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York rejected all of those arguments.

"Identifying no errors in the District Court's conduct of this complex case, we affirm the District Court's ... judgment of conviction," Judge Jose Cabranes wrote in the ruling.

Maxwell, 62, was found guilty in December 2021 of luring young girls to Epstein so he could molest them, between 1994 and 2004. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June 2022.

Epstein sexually abused children hundreds of times over more than a decade, exploiting vulnerable girls as young as 14. Prosecutors said Maxwell, his longtime companion, helped him and made the abuse possible.

He killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial.

The case has drawn widespread attention because of Epstein and Maxwell's links to royals, presidents and billionaires. Maxwell herself is the daughter of the late British media tycoon Robert Maxwell, who once owned the New York Daily News.

While their celebrity connections didn't play a prominent role in Maxwell's trial, mentions of friends such as Bill Clinton and Donald Trump showed how the pair exploited their connections.

The trial revolved around allegations from only a handful of Epstein's accusers. Four testified that they were abused in the 1990s and early 2000s at Epstein's mansions in Florida, New York, New Mexico and the Virgin Islands.

In 2007, Epstein reached a deal with federal prosecutors in Florida in which he agreed to plead guilty to two sex crimes and serve 18 months in prison. As part of the arrangement, known as an NPA, prosecutors agreed not to prosecute any of Epstein's co-conspirators.

The appeals court ruled that this agreement applied only to the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of Florida and didn't apply to prosecutors in New York.

"There is nothing in the NPA that affirmatively shows that the NPA was intended to bind multiple districts," Carbanes wrote. "Instead, where the NPA is not silent, the agreement's scope is expressly limited to the Southern District of Florida."

The court also rejected suggestions that some of the charges were filed too late, saying that Congress in 2003 passed legislation stating that no statute of limitations would apply to crimes involving the sexual or physical abuse of minors "during the life of the child."

"The statutory text makes clear that Congress intended to extend the time to bring charges of sexual abuse for pre-enactment conduct as the prior statute of limitations was inadequate," Carbanes wrote.

Maxwell is serving her sentence at a low-security federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida.