Ghislaine Maxwell: Jury Selection Begins for Prosecution of Alleged Pimp Jeffrey Epstein

The process against Ghislaine Maxwell, the alleged pimp accused of capturing teenagers so that the tycoon Jeffrey Epstein could abuse them, has this Tuesday one of its preliminary phases with the selection of the jury, which will be public by decision of Judge Alison J. Nathan.

It is unknown how long the selection of the twelve-member jury may take, but in any case the date of the first hearing is set for November 29.

The attorneys of Maxwell, 59, had asked that this selection be made behind closed doors to avoid giving greater publicity to an already extremely high-profile case, but Nathan, of the federal court of the southern district of Manhattan, argued that the first amendment to the Constitution, which protects press freedom, prevails.

Juror questionnaires typically ask whether a potential juror has prior knowledge of a criminal case, news articles, or other sources, knows people related to the case, and whether they or people they know have been victims. of the crimes tried; in the affirmative case, they are ruled out due to the possible prejudices with which they will attend the hearings.

In addition, criteria of age, race and profession are usually taken into account to form juries that are as representative of society as possible.

Maxwell, the daughter of a wealthy British businessman, has been in prison since July 2020 and the judge has denied her probation on the grounds that she has three passports and is at risk of flight.

In this regard, the New York Times newspaper today collects in an article the numerous complaints of the team of defenders of Maxwell because of her conditions of detention, so strict that one of the lawyers compares her with those of the character of the psychopath Hannibal Lecter in the movie “The Silence of the Lambs” (“The silence of the innocents”).

The judge has dismissed almost all the defense requests, such as lifting the anonymity of the victims who will testify in the courtroom under a pseudonym, and to protect their identity, she has prohibited the work of the so-called “courtroom artists”, hired to draw cases. media from which photographs cannot be obtained.

For the newspaper, the trial of Maxwell It is a kind of “trial by proxy” for the main defendant, Jeffrey Epstein, arrested in July 2019 and who committed suicide in the Manhattan prison cell where he had been since August of that same year.

Suicide of Epstein It came just a month after he was formally accused of abusing and exploiting dozens of teenagers both at his Manhattan (New York) mansion and at his Palm Beach (Florida) residence and on his Virgin Islands property, allegedly with the help of Maxwell, with whom he had been romantically involved in the past.

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