Ghislaine Maxwell trial judge warns coronavirus could disrupt proceedings
- ‘We are seeing an astronomical spike in the number of Covid-positive cases in New York City over the last one to two weeks due to the Omicron variant,’ said Judge Alison Nathan
- Maxwell is accused of recruiting and grooming young girls to be sexually abused by the late American financier Jeffrey Epstein
The judge presiding over Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial warned the courtroom on Tuesday that the swell of coronavirus cases in New York could end up disrupting the trial.
“We are seeing an astronomical spike in the number of Covid-positive cases in New York City over the last one to two weeks due to the Omicron variant,” said Manhattan federal court Judge Alison Nathan.
“And we now face a high and escalating risk that jurors or trial participants may need to quarantine, thus disrupting trial – putting at risk our ability to complete this trial.”
Nathan said extending deliberations by an hour would provide the jury more time each day “to continue to engage in its thoughtful deliberations.”
It was not clear whether Nathan planned to ask jurors to deliberate on Thursday and New Year’s Eve on Friday when courts are closed. She planned to hash out an extended timetable later on Tuesday.
“We are very simply at a different place regarding the pandemic than we were only one week ago,” the judge added.
The daily virus case count in New York climbed to an all-time high of nearly 50,000 on Christmas. And the state’s total count of daily Covid-19 hospitalisations hit 5,526 on Monday, up about 80 per cent since the beginning of the month. According to some estimates, roughly one in every 60 people in Manhattan has the highly contagious virus.
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Maxwell’s lawyers have fought against telling the jury to extend their deliberations, contending the memos imply improperly that they should hurry up. The jury has spent three full days deliberating the sex trafficking conspiracy case, which is not an unusual amount of time for a trial of complex nature.
Maxwell appeared to be smiling when she entered the courtroom on Tuesday morning wearing black on black, her green folio tucked under her arm.
As a prosecutor disputed her defence’s latest argument about instructions to the jury regarding how to debate one of the charges, Maxwell sat back and threw her right arm over the back of her chair, exuding an air of resignation.
The alleged chief recruiter of Jeffrey Epstein’s teenage victims said something inaudible to her siblings before being escorted back to the holding cells behind the courtroom walls.
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Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to charges she aided Epstein in a decade-long scheme to transport teenage girls as young as 14 to his private properties in the US and Europe for sexual abuse.
The 60-year-old contends government prosecutors have scapegoated her in her ex-boyfriend’s absence since he hanged himself while awaiting trial on similar charges and could not be brought to justice.
Her lawyers have argued that dating Epstein was the biggest mistake of her life – but one that was not a crime.
