The judge in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial has ordered a hearing to determine why a juror in the case gave incorrect answers on a questionnaire and whether Maxwell, as a result, is entitled to a new criminal trial.
Juror 50, identified in news reports as Scotty David, gave a number of interviews after the trial disclosing that he had been a victim of sexual abuse and that he shared his experiences as a victim with other jurors to help them understand why the memories of trauma survivors are often imprecise.
But he had told the court that he was not a victim of sexual abuse, assault or harassment in a questionnaire that prospective jurors were required to fill out under the penalty of perjury which was made public Thursday. He also wrote that he had never been a victim of crime.
The trial, held late last year, ended with Maxwell’s conviction on five of six counts, including sexually trafficking a minor. The 60-year-old British socialite had been an associate of multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who was accused of trafficking countless underage girls in New York, New Mexico and Florida. Epstein died in jail in August 2019 before he was able to stand trial. His death was ruled a suicide by hanging.
Maxwell was indicted in 2020 on charges that she helped Epstein facilitate — and even herself participated in — the abuse of young girls. The jury deliberated six days before finding her guilty. Victims testified during the trial that Maxwell helped groom them to be sexually abused by Epstein.
Maxwell’s defense team tried to show that the victims were not credible by pointing to inconsistencies in their testimony, as well as how some of them failed to report the abuse when it happened.
Just days after the trial ended, Juror 50 gave interviews in which he said he thought that sharing his own sexual abuse with other jurors helped them understand the witnesses’ inconsistencies and their reluctance to report the abuse.
Now he will have to answer to the judge.
The hearing, set for March 8, however, will not address whether the juror’s sexual assault history had any influence on the jury; rather, whether the juror misled the defense and prosecutors by not filling out the questionnaire accurately.
“To be clear, the potential impropriety is not that someone with a history of sexual abuse may have served on the jury. Rather it is the failure to respond truthfully to questions during the jury selection process that asked for material information so that any potential bias could be explored,’’ wrote Judge Alison Nathan.
Nathan also noted that the juror’s post-trial statements are “clear, strong, substantial and incontrovertible evidence that a specific, non-speculative impropriety — namely, a false statement during jury selection — has occurred.”
Maxwell’s defense lawyers argued in a filing unsealed Thursday that had the juror mentioned his sexual abuse history, they would have sought to disqualify him.
Federal prosecutors countered, in a reply made public Thursday, that eight jurors who disclosed they had been victims of sexual harassment, sexual abuse or sexual assault were allowed to remain in the jury pool after saying that they could be fair and impartial in follow-up questioning.
Legal experts have said that the juror’s inaccurate response to the question would not necessarily be enough to automatically qualify Maxwell for a new trial. Nathan will likely evaluate whether the juror’s actions were purposeful — and whether he was incapable of being impartial.
Maxwell’s lawyers wrote that the juror’s post-trial interviews suggested that his false responses were intentional and they pointed to his correspondence on Twitter with an author of one of the stories about him and his reply to a tweet written by Annie Farmer, one of the victims who testified against Maxwell, thanking Farmer for her testimony, according to Maxwell’s request for a new trial.
Prosecutors countered that Maxwell’s lawyers failed to establish that the juror was biased and pointed to statements he had made in post-trial interviews that he had entered the trial with an open mind.
Despite the wishes of Maxwell’s lawyers, Nathan will be the only one doing the questioning at the March 8 hearing, not Maxwell’s attorneys or federal prosecutors. Maxwell’s team had likened a hearing with only Nathan asking the questions to a “show trial.”
Maxwell is also appealing her conviction on other grounds. Her sentencing is scheduled for June. She could face 65 years in prison.
