Even when an uproar on the archives related to Jeffrey Epstein wraps to the president of the United States, Donald Trump and the Congress, the United States Supreme Court is due to the controversy and will decide whether to listen to an offer from an associate of the late financial and sentencer financially to annul his criminal sentence.
The judges are expected, now in their summer break, at the end of September they consider whether to have an appeal of the British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, which currently meets a prison sentence of 20 years after being convicted in 2021 by a jury in New York to help Epstein to sexually abuse adolescents.
Maxwell’s lawyers have told the Supreme Court that their conviction was not valid because an agreement of non -prosecution and statement of guilt that federal prosecutors had made with Epstein in Florida in 2007 also protected their associates and should have expanded their criminal prosecution in New York. Their lawyers have a deadline on Monday to present their final written letter in their appeal before the Court.
Some legal experts see the merit in Maxwell’s claim, noting that it touches an unstable issue of US law that has divided some of the regional federal courts of the Nation, known as circuit courts.
Mitchell Epner, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice, said there is the possibility that the Supreme Court assume the case and pointed out the disagreement between the Courts of Appeals. Such division between the circuit courts can be a factor when the main judicial agency of the Nation considers whether or not to listen to a case.
“The question of whether a guilt agreement of the United States prosecutor’s office unites another federal prosecution as a whole is a serious problem that has divided the circuits,” said Epner.
While it is uncommon, “there have been several cases that present the problem over the years,” he added.
The Trump Department of Justice seemed to recognize the division of the circuit in a brief presented to the judges this month, but urged them to reject the appeal.
Any disparity between the decisions of the lower court “is of limited importance”, the general lawyer D. John Sauer wrote in the report: “Because the scope of a similar declaration or agreement is under the control of the parties to the agreement.”
If the Supreme Court chooses to grant Maxwell’s appeal, he would hear arguments during his new mandate that begins in October, with a decision that is then expected at the end of next June.
Assembly pressure
Trump and his administration have faced a growing pressure from their supporters to publish additional information on the investigation of the Department of Justice on Epstein, who hanged himself in 2019 in a cell in the Manhattan prison, concluded an autopsy, while waiting for the trial on sexual traffic charges.
The United States Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, former Trump personal lawyer, met with Maxwell in Florida on Thursday in what his lawyer called “a very productive day.”
The Administration reversed this month this month in its promise to publish more documents about Epstein, which caused fury among some of Trump’s most loyal followers. Epstein’s case has long been the object of conspiracy theories, considering his rich and powerful friends and the circumstances of his death.
The conservative majority of the Supreme Court includes three judges appointed by Trump during their first term in office.
If the court would like to assume such a case that represents a political land mine is an open question. The judges listen to relatively few cases, around 70 of more than 4,000 appeals presented in the court each year, and have a broad discretion to choose which will be in their file. At least four of the judges must agree so that the court takes a case.
Deal de Epstein
Maxwell’s appeal focuses on an agreement that Epstein attacked in 2007 to avoid federal prosecution by declaring himself guilty of state criminal crimes in Florida to request prostitution and ask minors to participate in prostitution. Epstein then served 13 months in a state minimum security installation.
In 2019, during Trump’s first mandate as president, the United States Department of Justice accused Epstein in Manhattan of sexual trafficking of minors. Epstein declared himself innocent, but committed suicide before trial at age 66.
Maxwell was arrested in 2020 and convicted the following year after being accused by federal recruitment and girl preparation prosecutors to have sexual encounters with Epstein between 1994 and 2004.
Maxwell failed to convince a judge of first instance and the Second Court of Appeals of the United States circuit based in New York to throw his conviction based on the 2007 non-pressure agreement, which declared that “the United States also agrees that it will not institute criminal charges against possible Epstein co-conspirators.”
In the appeal before the Supreme Court, Maxwell’s lawyer, David Markus, said that, in his reference to the conspirators, the Epstein agreement had no geographical limit on where the non -reaction agreement could be enforced.
“If the government can promise one thing and deliver another, and the courts let it happen, that erodes the integrity of the justice system,” Markus told Reuters.
“It’s not just about Ghislaine Maxwell. It’s about whether the government is in his word,” Markus said.
The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has urged the Supreme Court to hear Maxwell’s appeal, given the prevalence of guilt agreements in the United States Criminal Justice System already guarantee that the Government maintains its promises.
The group represents thousands of private lawyers, public defenders, law professors and judges throughout the country. He said in a presentation before the judges that the lack of a geographical limitation means “any part of the Department of Justice can institute criminal charges against any co-conspirator in any district.”
The professor of the Law Faculty of Columbia, Daniel Richman, an expert in criminal law, said it was unusual for the United States prosecutor to include protection for conspirators in the agreement not to process Epstein.
That peculiarity could be a sufficient reason for the Supreme Court to avoid the matter, Richman said, since it makes the case a poor vehicle to resolve if you supplicate them in a court district link actions in all other districts of the Court.
“There were many strange things about this agreement,” said Richman, who will become the interest of the Supreme Court to assume Maxwell’s appeal.
Richman said he expected the political consequences not to play in the decision of the Supreme Court on whether to listen to Maxwell’s appeal. If he does, Richman said, assuming the case could allow Maxwell to avoid cooperating with the government and dodging responsibility.
“A decision that would allow Maxwell to protect himself would probably not be something in which Richman said about the judges of the Supreme Court.
