© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Ghislaine Maxwell, an associate of Jeffrey Epstein, sits as the guilty verdict in his sexual assault trial is read in a courtroom mockup in New York City, U.S., December 29, 2021. REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg
By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK (Reuters) – British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell has asked a U.S. appeals court to overturn her conviction for helping Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse teenagers, saying a series of errors clouded her judgment and that prosecutors they made her a scapegoat because the financier was dead.
“The government prosecuted Ms. Maxwell as a proxy for Jeffrey Epstein” to satisfy “public outrage” over the case, Maxwell’s lawyers said in a filing Tuesday night with the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. USA in Manhattan.
Maxwell’s attorneys offered several arguments to dismiss the case or give their client a new trial, including that she was immune from prosecution, prosecutors waited too long to indict her, and one of her jurors was biased.
A spokesman for US Attorney Damian Williams in Manhattan declined to comment.
Maxwell, 61, is serving a 20-year prison sentence after a Manhattan jury convicted her in December 2021 of five counts of recruiting and grooming four girls to abuse Epstein between 1994 and 2004.
Epstein committed suicide at age 66 in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019, a month after being accused of sex trafficking.
Maxwell’s trial team had sought to discredit his accusers, claiming that prosecutors turned his case into a legal grudge match that Epstein, a registered sex offender, never had.
Hundreds of women have claimed to have been abused by Epstein, and famous people, most notably Britain’s Prince Andrew, who were friends with him, have seen their reputations tarnished or destroyed.
Maxwell, the daughter of the late British media mogul Robert Maxwell, has hired a new legal team headed by Arthur Aidala for her appeal, who in 2020 represented disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein in his first sex crimes trial.