Ghislaine Maxwell

2022 - 3 - 9

Post cover — Image courtesy of "The New York Times"

Ghislaine Maxwell Juror Says He 'Didn't Lie' to Get on Jury (The New York Times)

The man's statements to the news media after Ms. Maxwell's conviction have clouded the guilty verdict in the case.

Asked if he had hoped to be selected, he replied: “I did not hope to be on this jury. At the start of the hearing, Judge Nathan asked Juror 50 if he had answered the question about sexual abuse accurately, and he said no. Judge Nathan asked whether he had been concerned with following her instructions during jury selection. But I did not set out in order to get on this jury.” Asked if he harbored any bias toward Ms. Maxwell, Juror 50 said no. He told his mother about it when he was in high school, and she called the police, he said, but no charges were brought. “It doesn’t define me,” he said. Ms. Maxwell, in navy prison scrubs, sat with her lawyers across the courtroom. She gave Ms. Maxwell’s lawyers and the government until March 15 to file written arguments based on the hearing. Juror 50, who identified himself during jury selection as a Manhattan resident in his mid-30s, wore a blue button-down shirt under a dark sweater. But a judge can examine statements jurors made during the selection phase. “I didn’t lie in order to get on this jury.”

“One of the Biggest Mistakes I Have Ever Made in My Life”: A ... (Vanity Fair)

Judge Alison Nathan questions juror number 50 about his answers on the juror questionnaire as Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell listens in a courtroom ...

David said that he was inspired by the courage of the victims who testified and that, considering he didn’t use his full name in the interviews and only has a small social media following, he didn’t think friends and family would see the coverage or link it to him. “To be clear,” Nathan wrote in a court filing last month, “the potential impropriety is not that someone with a history of sexual abuse may have served on the jury. David told Nathan that when he was nine and 10 years old, his stepbrother and one of his stepbrother’s friends sexually abused him. When he was filling out the form, he saw other people finishing up and wondered why he was taking so long. He was distracted by noise and the crowd of potential jurors, saying he sat twiddling his thumbs for hours as he pondered a recent breakup. The man, identified as Juror 50 in court documents and as Scotty David (his first and middle names) in interviews he has given, told several reporters in January that his own experience of being sexually abused helped shape the deliberations.

Judge questions juror in Ghislaine Maxwell trial over failure to ... (ABC News)

A juror on the Ghislaine Maxwell trial tells a judge he did not disclose the childhood abuse he endured because he "skimmed through" the preselection ...

"This is a terrible excuse, but I really didn't think I'd be chosen. "I did not hope to be on this jury," the juror said. A juror in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial has faced a hearing over his failure to disclose a history of child abuse — a revelation that has prompted Maxwell's defence team to push for a retrial.

Ghislaine Maxwell juror regrets not disclosing sex abuse (ABC News)

A juror in the sex trafficking trial of British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell says his failure to reveal his own child sex abuse history during jury selection ...

The judge granted the juror immunity before he answered questions for about an hour. He described persuading some fellow jurors during deliberations that a victim’s imperfect memory of abuse doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. (This includes actual or attempted sexual assault or other unwanted sexual advance, including by a stranger, acquaintance, supervisor, teacher, or family member.)” Lawyers for Maxwell — who was present in the courtroom, clad in a dark blue jail smock — say the verdict should be thrown out. It happened so long ago and it’s not part of who I am.” “I honestly never thought I'd be chosen for this jury.”

Ghislaine Maxwell juror apologizes as new trial hangs in the balance (WPBF West Palm Beach)