Ghislaine Maxwell in New York City, September 20, 2013.
Laura Kavanaugh | Getty Images
Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of crimes related to the recruitment of underage girls to be sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein, filed a petition Wednesday seeking to have her conviction vacated, claiming that “substantial new evidence has emerged” that undermines the case against her.
The former British socialite could be released from a federal prison in Texas, where she is serving a 20-year sentence, if Maxwell’s long-awaited habeas petition in Manhattan’s U.S. District Court is approved.
However, such petitions are usually denied.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court refused to hear Maxwell’s appeal from his conviction.
A habeas petition is generally the last option for an incarcerated person to have a conviction vacated. Ms. Maxwell filed the petition “professionally,” or on her own, without an attorney to represent her.
The petition was filed two days before a deadline set by Congress for the Justice Department to release investigative files on Mr. Epstein and Mr. Maxwell.
In a court filing, Maxwell said the new evidence on which the application is based “emerged from related civil litigation, government disclosures, investigative reports, and documents establishing constitutional violations that undermine the fairness of the proceeding.”
The filing says her conviction should be vacated because jurors at her 2021 trial concealed a history of sexual abuse that was directly related to the “issues at trial” and “gave false answers” during the jury selection process.
“Subsequent interviews, new evidence, and sworn statements confirmed intentional concealment and actual bias by the jury,” the filing states.
On the second point, Maxwell said prosecutors suppressed the detective’s grand jury testimony, which “contradicted the trial testimony … and undermined the government’s only evidence, the massage table,” which established the elements necessary for the jury to convict her on two counts in the case.
