A federal appeals court has rejected Ghislaine Maxwell’s petition for the court to reconsider its decision to uphold its conviction of the British socialite’s role in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking operation of minors.
The 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan denied the request on Monday.
Maxwell’s attorneys filed the petition on Nov. 1 to request that all judges on the case revisit the decision, which is called an en banc review.
“En Banc may be ordered when, as here, the panel decision was based on a decision of this Court that it was not permitted to overrule,” Maxwell’s attorneys said in their petition.
That decision was the heroin-trafficking case of U.S. v. Annabi, in which the attorneys said created “a canon of construction for interpreting plea agreements” that conflict with other court rulings’ immunity deals.
In 2019, Epstein was indicted on several charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy. He was reported to have died by suicide in August 2019, according to official reports.
In their Nov. 1 petition, Maxwell’s attorneys said Epstein’s NPA with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, in return for pleading guilty to state charges, included an agreement to “not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein.”
Maxwell’s attorneys called for her indictments to be dismissed based on the language found in the NPA.
“Alternatively, in the event that the court determined that the language of the NPA was ambiguous, Maxwell, who was not a party to the agreement, sought discovery and a hearing to establish affirmative evidence of intent to bind other districts consistent with the plain language in the co-conspirator clause,” the attorneys argued. “Her motion was denied without a hearing or discovery.”
A district court found that Maxwell “was a beneficiary of the NPA” but she wasn’t granted immunity, basing its decision on the Annabi case.
Citing that case, the court held that a plea agreement “binds only the office of the United States Attorney for the district in which the plea is entered unless it affirmatively appears that the agreement contemplates a broader restriction.”
Maxwell’s attorneys argued that the clause “contained no limiting language” and that Maxwell “was denied both discovery and a hearing and was therefore left to rely on the NPA” based on documents not shared with her attorneys.
“Notably, the prosecutors could not recall why the clause had been added, much less who it was meant to immunize,” the attorneys argued.
Zachary Stieber and Dave Paone contributed to this report.
