The Supreme Court has declined to hear Ghislaine Maxwell’s appeal, leaving intact her 20-year prison sentence for aiding Jeffrey Epstein in the sexual exploitation of minors.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite serving a 20-year prison sentence for helping Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls. The justices, without comment, declined to revisit her conviction, ending her legal bid to overturn the case.
Maxwell’s lawyers argued that a 2007 non-prosecution deal between Epstein and Miami federal prosecutors should have protected her from later charges. Federal appeals judges previously ruled the Manhattan prosecution was valid.
A jury in 2021 found Maxwell guilty of sex trafficking and related offenses after four women testified about abuse they suffered as minors in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Her lawyer, David Oscar Markus, maintained that Maxwell “never should have been tried, much less convicted.” Maxwell, 62, is currently held in a Texas prison camp after being transferred from Florida earlier this year.
Epstein died by suicide in jail in 2019 while awaiting his own trial on sex trafficking charges.