Almost exactly two years after Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested in New Hampshire and brought to New York to be charged with conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to recruit, nurse and abuse underage girls, she will be sentenced Tuesday in Manhattan federal court.
If Judge Alison J. Nathan agrees to the government’s request for at least 30 years in prison, Ms. Maxwell could spend much of the rest of her life in prison.
Ms. Maxwell, 60, the daughter of British media mogul Robert Maxwell, was convicted on December 29 and will face three charges: sex trafficking, conspiracy and transportation of a minor with intent to engage in illegal sexual activity.
The defense has asked the judge to impose a sentence shorter than the 20 years recommended by the court’s probation service. There is no minimum sentence for Ms Maxwell, who has been in prison since she was refused bail following her arrest on July 2, 2020.
Ms. Maxwell’s sentencing hearing could last more than an hour. Several of her prosecutors, including some who testified at her trial, have asked to address the judge, and Ms Maxwell will also be given the opportunity to speak. Her lawyers have said she plans to appeal, and it’s possible Ms Maxwell, who did not testify at her trial, chooses to remain silent in court on Tuesday as well.
Her trial was widely seen as the reckoning that her longtime companion Mr Epstein, 66, never had. The disgraced financier hanged himself in a Manhattan prison cell a month after his arrest in July 2019 while he awaited his own trial on charges of sex trafficking.
Still, Mr. Epstein loomed over the trial — his name popped up repeatedly, and Ms. Maxwell’s attorneys took every opportunity to divorce their client from him.
Ms. Maxwell’s attorneys, in a sentencing letter to the judge, quoted witness statements about Ms. Maxwell’s “facilitation of Epstein’s abuse,” but argued that “Epstein was the mastermind, Epstein was the main abuser, and Epstein orchestrated the crimes for his personal satisfaction.” ”
The lawyers claimed the government turned its attention to Ms. Maxwell only after the public outcry following Mr Epstein’s death while he was in custody at the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Prisons. They said authorities urgently wanted to “appease the renewed distress of Epstein’s prosecutors and restore the tarnished reputation of the DOJ and BOP”
“There would be no trial for Epstein and no public justification and justice for his accusers,” the lawyers wrote. “The government now had a huge hole to fill: Epstein’s empty chair.”
The office of Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in his submission to the judge that Ms. Maxwell had both failed to address her criminal behavior and showed a “complete lack of remorse.”
Ms. Maxwell’s attempt “to defame the government for prosecuting her, and her claim that she is being held responsible for Epstein’s crimes, are both absurd and offensive,” the prosecutors wrote.
“Instead of showing even a hint of acceptance of responsibility, the defendant makes a desperate attempt to blame wherever she can,” they said.
The prosecutor offered his evidence through 24 witnesses over 10 days in a case that centered on four accusers, now adults. Two of the women said Mr Epstein had engaged in sexual acts with them from the age of 14. One said that Mrs. Maxwell was sometimes present at the meetings, and the other said that Mrs. Maxwell harassed her directly by touching her breasts.
“Maxwell was a sophisticated predator who knew exactly what she was doing,” Alison Moe, a federal prosecutor, told the jury in her summary. “She manipulated her victims and she groomed them for sexual abuse.”
