Convicted child sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell is asking the US Supreme Court to hear an appeal against her conviction.
Maxwell’s lawyers filed a 159-page Petition to the highest court in the country on Thursday asking the Supreme Court Justices to throw out her 20-year sentence for sex trafficking.
Maxwell, 63, remains behind bars in Tallahassee State Prison in Florida after being convicted in December 2021 on five counts of aiding convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein in his sexual abuse of young girls.
The former close friend of Prince Andrew continues to vehemently deny all the charges against her and is asking the Supreme Court to throw out the conviction which could end up with her walking free.
Maxwell argues she should never have been charged as Epstein’s ‘co-conspirator’ because of a 2007 plea deal Epstein made in Florida in which he agreed to plead guilty to two counts of child sex abuse and served 13-months in jail in exchange for any of his ‘co-conspirators’ avoiding prosecution.
A federal appeals judge rejected her appeal last year, saying the Southern District of New York – where Maxwell was tried – was not covered by the Florida deal.
Now Maxwell’s lawyers are begging the Supreme Court to ‘decide once and for all’ whether the non-prosecution deal made in Florida should have applied to Maxwell.
In their lengthy petition, Maxwell’s lawyers said: ‘Despite the existence of a non-prosecution agreement promising in plain language that the United States would not prosecute any co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein, the United States in fact prosecuted Ghislaine Maxwell as a co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein.’
Convicted child sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell is asking the US Supreme Court to hear an appeal against her conviction (Pictured: Maxwell and Epstein at a party in New York in 2005)
Courtroom sketch of Maxwell as she stands at the podium to address Judge Alison Nathan during her sentencing in 2022
Maxwell (pictured here with Epstein) remains behind bars in Tallahassee State Prison in Florida
The lawyers argue that different legal jurisdictions have different rules when it comes to honoring a plea deal made in a different state.
The petition, written by Maxwell’s high-powered lawyer David Markus, added: ‘A defendant should be able to rely on a promise that the United States will not prosecute again, without being subject to a gotcha in some other jurisdiction that chooses to interpret that plain language promise in some other way.’
Four women testified at Maxwell’s New York trial that they had been abused with one saying she had been trafficked across state lines.
They claimed Maxwell aided and abetted Epstein in his global sex trafficking ring by recruiting and grooming underage girls.
Epstein killed himself in 2019 while behind bars in New York after being arrested on child sex trafficking charges.
Maxwell’s lawyers argue the plea deal he struck in Florida in 2007 ‘was entered into after extensive negotiation.
‘The language was hotly contested and subject to much revision back and forth, including specifically on the relevant language of the co-conspirator clause.
Ghislaine Maxwell in a mugshot
One of many images unearthed in an FBI raid in 2021 of Maxwell and Epstein
Maxwell gives Epstein a foot rub on his private jet in an image released by the US attorney’s office
Maxwell (holding a framed photograph of her late father) is the youngest child of media proprietor and fraudster, Robert Maxwell
‘In one of the earlier drafts, the government proposed language that the co-conspirator protection would be limited to the Southern District of Florida. Yet the final draft eliminated (this)…..and referred only to the United States.’
A source close to Maxwell said: ‘The Supreme Court should take this because far beyond the interest of Ghislaine Maxwell thousands of plea deals are entered into by the federal government and residents of Florida should be treated the same way as residents of Montana or New York or Oklahoma and that isn’t presently the case.
‘It’s a very important point of law for thousands of people.’
The Supreme Court is expected to make a ruling on whether to hear the case before it breaks for the summer in June.
