NEW YORK — Ghislaine Maxwell will likely spend the rest of her life in prison unless she can win a long-shot appeal — or is willing to come clean about everyone who was involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal enterprise.
Even then, experts say it will depend on what she knows and when the crimes happened.
Maxwell’s conviction Dec. 29 on five of six sex charges was a stunning denouement for the former British socialite who counted royalty, presidents and some of the world’s wealthiest people among her closest friends. It also presents the possibility that she could be sentenced to decades in prison, largely because she was found guilty of sex trafficking a minor, the most serious charge — which carries a maximum penalty of 40 years.
Still, for survivors, punishing Epstein’s top lieutenant is not enough. They say, Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime girlfriend, recruited underage girls to be sexually abused by the multimillionaire. And that she had help.
“Maxwell did not act alone. Others must be held accountable. I have faith that they will be,” said Virginia Giuffre, who was recruited by Maxwell when she was 16 and successfully sued Maxwell in 2016.
Prosecutors said that Maxwell had recruited and groomed four girls, two as young as 14 when they first met Maxwell, to be abused by Epstein, the financier, who had sumptuous homes in Florida, Manhattan and New Mexico, and who owned two private islands in the U.S. Virgin Islands. He died in federal custody in August 2019 in what has been ruled a suicide, one month after he was arrested on sex trafficking charges.
Now the question that everyone is asking is whether Maxwell, 60, will name names of others who helped Epstein — or some of their friends who may have participated in the abuse of girls and young women.
The problem, however, is whether the crimes are even prosecutable, experts say.
“The statute of limitations for these crimes are probably long past. But if she knows of new crimes — depending on the nature of the allegations and the victims — the government is likely to consider it,’’ said former federal prosecutor Paul Pelletier, who worked in the Justice Department for nearly 30 years.
“She could talk about the parties on the islands — but the question is whether any of it is within the [statute of] limitation period. She was with him for many years after that, so if he or others did commit any crimes against women, she would be the one to know.”
Maxwell’s family indicated that she is innocent and is planning to appeal her conviction.
“We believe firmly in our sister’s innocence — we are very disappointed with the verdict. We have already started the appeal tonight and we believe that she will ultimately be vindicated,” her family said in a statement.
David S. Weinstein, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Florida, said he sees any potential appeal as unlikely to succeed. The fact that one of the six charges was returned not guilty, for example, would make it hard for Maxwell’s lawyers to argue that the jury was pressured to deliver a verdict, even though the judge had urged jurors to deliberate longer each day to stave off the possibility of a mistrial should one of them contract COVID-19.
Federal prosecutors and Maxwell confirmed before trial that they had never discussed a plea deal, though Maxwell could still agree to cooperate with the government after her conviction in the hopes of reducing her sentence.
Barbara McQuade, the former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, said that people do sometimes change their minds about cooperation after they have been convicted.
“Sometimes that guilty verdict can bring with it the grim reality that she is going to go to prison,” McQuade said.
Maxwell wouldn’t need to decide to cooperate immediately. In fact, she could even decide to seek a deal to cooperate for one year after her sentencing. If she were to cooperate, she would have to admit her guilt — and that would likely spell the end of any appeal. She could still potentially retain the right to appeal the sentence she received. And she’d have to tell prosecutors what information she was willing to share before they agreed whether or not to strike a deal.
“The phrase you sometimes hear is ‘we don’t buy a pig in a poke,’” said McQuade. “She might come in and tell them everything and they might say that’s not worth it.”
While it’s possible that Maxwell could offer up information about potential sex crimes committed by Epstein’s powerful friends, Weinstein said that prosecutors would typically see that as “cooperating down,” as she and Epstein were at the top of the sex trafficking pyramid.
And there’s also the fact that she faces trial on two counts of perjury related to a deposition she gave in the 2016 civil suit brought by Giuffre.
Caleb Hayes-Deats, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, said the quality of information Maxwell might provide could overcome any reluctance by prosecutors to strike a deal.
“[If] Ghislaine Maxwell has bombshell information that prosecutors cannot get elsewhere, then cooperation could be an option,” he said.
It’s possible that she could offer information about crimes unrelated to sex trafficking, which could draw the interest of prosecutors. The college admissions bribery scandal known as “Operation Varsity Blues,” for example, came about because of information provided by a cooperating witness in an unrelated securities fraud case.
As for the perjury charges, McQuade thinks it’s unlikely they would just be dismissed without a deal, even though they carry a far lesser sentence if she were to be found guilty.
“Lying in court is a very serious crime,” she said. “I could see for deterrent purposes prosecutors bringing the case.”
Maxwell has not claimed that she was herself a victim of Epstein — but she could argue that or present other mitigating information in trying to seek a reduced sentence. Hayes-Deats pointed out, however, that sentencing rules for sex crimes involving a child, such as the sex trafficking charge Maxwell was convicted of, are less flexible than for other crimes.
The timing of the Maxwell verdict would appear to be inauspicious for Prince Andrew, who is currently facing a federal lawsuit brought by Giuffre in the Southern District of New York claiming that the prince sexually abused her at Maxwell’s former home in London, Epstein’s New York mansion and one of Epstein’s islands.
Experts say the Maxwell verdict has little direct legal impact on Andrew’s case.
“The Supreme Court has recognized that there’s a deep-rooted historic tradition that everyone should have his own day in court,“ Hayes-Deats said.
But evidence from the Maxwell case could be used in the Andrew suit.
Andrew has sought to have the complaint dismissed on the grounds that he is protected by a 2009 settlement Giuffre reached with Epstein. His lawyers also contend that a New York provision expanding the statute of limitations for sex crimes (under which Giuffre brought the suit) is unconstitutional. Andrew is also questioning Giuffre’s residency because she claimed in the complaint that she is a citizen of Colorado, but she currently lives in Australia and has for some time.
In the 2009 settlement agreement, publicly released Monday, Giuffre was paid $500,000.
Maxwell argued that she was immune from conviction because of a controversial non-prosecution agreement Epstein had reached with federal prosecutors in South Florida in 2007 that shielded his co-conspirators from prosecution. Some of the co-conspirators’ who were named in the 2007 agreement came up during Maxwell’s trial.
One of them, Lesley Groff, has been assured that she won’t be prosecuted, her lawyers have said. Two others, Sarah Kellen and Nadia Marcinkova, have claimed that they, too, were victims of Epstein.
But U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan, who presided over Maxwell’s trial, ruled that the agreement didn’t bar Maxwell — who was not named in the agreement — from being prosecuted in New York.
And it’s not likely to help Prince Andrew’s civil case either.
As part of the 2007 deal with prosecutors, Epstein served a short stint in the Palm Beach County jail, despite evidence that he had abused as many as three dozen girls. He remained free until the Miami Herald published a series of articles, called Perversion of Justice, in 2018 that explored new details of the agreement. The stories also, for the first time, gave voice to some of Epstein’s victims.
The next year Epstein was rearrested by federal agents, this time on sex trafficking charges. He was in jail awaiting trial when he was found dead by hanging. The year after that, Maxwell, whose role as Epstein’s girlfriend, muse and recruiter of young women was detailed in Perversion of Justice, was arrested in rural New Hampshire.
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