Jury Deliberation Day 2 - Ghislaine Maxwell Trial
There was no verdict yesterday, the first full day of deliberations by the jury in the US vs. Maxwell trial.
Over 12 days of testimony, the prosecution and the defense presented their cases, with closing arguments on Monday. The jury began deliberating last night following those closing arguments.
Yesterday morning at 9:00 AM they restarted their deliberations. Around 10:07 AM, lawyers from both sides came shuffling into the courtroom to address a note from the jury. Ghislaine Maxwell came in too, wearing a black mock neck sweater and dark pants. She hugged her defense lawyer Bobbi Sternheim warmly, who rubbed her back in return.
The jury was asking for the transcripts of Jane, Carolyn, and Annie, which both parties agreed to after a redaction process.
Around 1:14 PM Ghislaine Maxwell came back into the room. She was surrounded by her lawyers and legal staff. Laura Menninger took a knee beside her and talked animatedly, like she was explaining something serious to her.
But it was another false alarm. By 1:30 PM she’d walked out. Apparently the transcripts asked for earlier by the jury had just finished being printed out.
About an hour and a half later, at 2:54 PM, Maxwell was back in the room. The jury had sent another request - this time for an FBI deposition they called 3505–005 from Carolyn’s cross examination.
The defense and prosecution went back and forth on the best way to respond to this -
“A note saying that transcript isn’t in evidence would be an appropriate response,” Maurene Comey said.
Judge Nathan proposed responding to the jury by writing back “all admitted exhibits are before you.”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” Comey said.
Maxwell’s defense lawyer Jeffrey Pagliuca wanted to indicate to the jury that the relevant testimony from 3505-005 was in Carolyn’s cross-examination.
Comey thought it was important to clarify to the jury that the deposition designated 3505-005 was not actually in evidence. Instead, sections from it were quoted to Carolyn during her cross-examination by the defense.
Pagliuca proposed adding a second sentence - something to the effect of “the testimony about that has been provided in the transcript.”
Nathan ended up sending a note that said this: “I received your note regarding 3505-005. It is not an admitted exhibit. The testimony about 3505-005 is in the testimony you’ve been given.”
The lawyers came back in soon after at 3:16. Then, Pagliuca said that he had determined that there was additional testimony about the exhibit from Jason Richards, an FBI agent who had interviewed Carolyn in 2007.
Richards testified about an FB-302 form–which are summaries of FBI interviews–from 2007, where Carolyn told him that she had looked up Epstein’s phone number in the phonebook to call him.
This, the defense has argued, would contradict her testimony that Maxwell asked for her contact information when she left the first time after she was abused by Epstein.
But the judge overruled this request from the defense, because it was not what the jury asked for.
The jury also asked to finish at 5:00 PM, and said they would finish their deliberations at 4:30 PM today, Wednesday.
At 4:38 PM, the jury sent their final note for the day, asking if they could consider Annie’s testimony in terms of conspiracy in counts 1 and 3. There was a limiting instruction from the judge during her testimony that they couldn’t consider her testimony for counts 2 and 4.
“Yes,” said Comey.
“I mean clearly the substantive answer is yes,” said the judge.
The defense tried a few different ways to avoid a simple yes-no answer to the question, asking that the limiting instruction be restated to the jury.
“The implication of this question is that they’re following this limiting instruction,” Judge Nathan said.
“The jury asked for a simple yes or no question,” said Comey, “they should be given a simple yes or no answer.”
Nathan agreed to this, and sent a note that said “yes, you may consider it.”