Ghislaine Maxwell’s Bid for a New Trial Faces a Major Hurdle

The judge was questioning potential jurors for the Ghislaine Maxwell sex-trafficking trial when she asked a 35-year-old Manhattan man, identified as Juror 50, whether he had any doubt about his ability to be fair to both sides.

“No,” Juror 50 replied.

The judge pressed him: Did he have any reason to think he could not be impartial?

“I do not,” replied the man, who ended up as a member of the jury that convicted Ms. Maxwell on five of the six counts she faced.

But revelations in the news media that Juror 50 and a second juror each disclosed personal histories of childhood sexual abuse to their fellow jurors during deliberations have clouded the verdict and led to a flurry of new court filings focused on jury impartiality.

Ms. Maxwell’s lawyers, citing Juror 50’s comments in the news media, have said they will seek a new trial. The judge, Alison J. Nathan of Federal District Court, has asked both sides for their views on whether a court inquiry is appropriate, and, if so, what its nature should be.

In trying to assess the impact of the jury room disclosures that Juror 50 described in the news media — and potentially those of the second juror as well — the judge is likely to be blocked by one of the legal system’s most stringent and time-honored rules: She cannot ask the jurors what happened during their deliberations. And the jurors are not allowed to tell her.

Even though jurors may speak to the news media or write about their experiences, the Supreme Court has held that any jurors’ statements or testimony about the inner workings of deliberations cannot be used by lawyers challenging a verdict, or by a judge deciding whether to overturn it.

The only exception, the Supreme Court has said, is where overt statements during deliberations show a juror was motivated by racial animus in voting to convict.

“The court has been extraordinarily protective of the jury as a black box,” said Richard L. Jolly, a law professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles who has written extensively about the jury system.

“We really don’t want a court to scrutinize every juror’s considerations,” he said. “We don’t want the court to dig in and start policing how the jury is reaching its verdict.”

“These 12 people show up, they do their job, they go home,” he added.

The jurors in the widely watched Maxwell trial heard testimony over three weeks showing that Ms. Maxwell had helped the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein entice, groom and sexually abuse teenage girls.

The jurors, whose names were not made public by the court, deliberated for five full days. They sent out a series of notes with questions for the judge and requests for copies of transcripts before announcing their verdict on Dec. 29.

A few days later, Juror 50 revealed in an Instagram post that he had participated as a juror in the trial. (The post has since been taken down.) In interviews with several news outlets, Juror 50 said he was proud of the verdict and that he had found the four women who testified about being childhood victims of Ms. Maxwell to be credible.

He also revealed that during deliberations, he had disclosed that he had been sexually abused as a child and had not revealed that abuse until years later. He also explained to his fellow jurors that he could not remember every detail of his abuse, but that did not mean it had not occurred.

The jury room “went silent” as he told his story, Juror 50 said in an interview with DailyMail.com.

A second juror, in an interview with The New York Times, also described being sexually abused as a child and discussing that experience during jury deliberations. The juror, who requested anonymity, said the disclosure appeared to help influence the jury’s discussions.

Despite the broad prohibition on delving into the jury’s deliberations, Judge Nathan could examine how the two jurors responded to detailed questionnaires that hundreds of prospective jurors filled out in the weeks before trial. The parties relied on the responses to decide whether to seek to exclude jurors for various reasons like bias.

Question 48 asked whether the potential juror had ever been a victim of sexual harassment, sexual abuse or sexual assault, or even received unwanted sexual advances; and if so, whether that would affect their ability to serve fairly and impartially in the trial.

Benjamin Brafman, a prominent defense lawyer in New York with no involvement in the Maxwell case, said, “A lot will depend on whether or not either juror lied on their questionnaire when answering these specific questions.”

Indeed, he said, in a case like Ms. Maxwell’s, perhaps the most important question to be asked of prospective jurors was whether they had a history of sexual abuse.

“It’s not just ‘I was the victim of a crime,’” Mr. Brafman said, “but ‘I was a victim of the same crime that the defendant is being accused of committing.’”

Although Ms. Maxwell was not specifically charged with sexual abuse, such crimes by Mr. Epstein were at the center of the case.

Juror 50 told Reuters that he “flew through” the questionnaire and did not recall being asked about his personal experiences with sexual abuse. He said he would have answered such questions honestly, Reuters reported. It is not known how the second juror filled out the questionnaire.

Both Juror 50 and the second juror were called for a second round of jury selection, where Judge Nathan, drawing in part on their responses to the questionnaire, conducted questioning known as voir dire. Neither of the jurors was asked whether they had been abused sexually or volunteered that they had been during the voir dire.

Legal experts said Judge Nathan will have to determine whether the defense, had it known of the two jurors’ histories, could have successfully challenged them “for cause” — because they could not be impartial.

Moira Penza, a former federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, said it would be difficult for Judge Nathan not to order a new trial if any juror intentionally lied.

“If, on the other hand, the juror says that this was a mistake, that he missed the question, that he misunderstood the question,” Ms. Penza said, “then you could have an inquiry from Judge Nathan about whether that juror was still fair and impartial.”

“Was that juror still willing to follow the court’s instructions? Was that juror still going in with an open mind?” said Ms. Penza, who helped win the 2019 racketeering conviction of Keith Raniere, the Nxivm sex cult leader.

Stephen Gillers, who teaches legal ethics at New York University School of Law, said that if either juror had failed to reveal their abuse history in the questionnaire, Judge Nathan would want to know the answer to the question that “she would have asked” had the jurors filled out the questionnaires accurately.

“If it was intentional, that counts against the juror — that raises suspicion,” Professor Gillers said. “If it was a mistake or overlooked, then that counts in favor of crediting the juror if he now says it didn’t affect my deliberation at all.”

While Judge Nathan considers what to do in the Maxwell case, the revelations appear to have prompted at least one other judge on the same court to underline the importance of filling out a jury questionnaire accurately.

Last week, Judge Jesse M. Furman was addressing a group of potential jurors being screened for another high-profile trial, of the lawyer Michael Avenatti, who has pleaded not guilty to charges he stole $300,000 from the pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels. “It is absolutely essential that you answer all of the questions truthfully,” the judge said, adding that the jurors would be under oath and their responses would be given “under penalty of perjury.”

Soon, he returned to the topic: “You must answer each and every question truthfully and completely,” he stressed.

Then, after the group was sworn in, he became emphatic. “Because I cannot say it too many times, let me repeat,” he started in again.