Ghislaine Maxwell’s Petition to the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court was occupied during its summer vacation, issuing decisions about the emergency petitions that allowed President Donald Trump to empty the Ministry of Education, to expel people to South Sudan and to fire federal employees and agency chiefs. The judges have so far kept away from the rebirth of Jeffrey Epstein’s scandal, who has managed to vacillate the Maga The support of the movement in Trump, but when they come back to consider ordinary petitions this fall, we expect who invites them to the question. The petition comes from Ghislaine Maxwell, who was sentenced, in 2021, federal crimes linked to the activation of the sexual abuse of Epstein of minor girls, and who was then sentenced to twenty years in prison. She maintains that the federal government’s non-pretention agreement with Epstein has given its immunity, and that its convictions must therefore be thrown. And, surprisingly, she has a point.
Remember that in 2007, while Epstein was the subject of a federal investigation for the sexual trafficking of minors, he agreed to plead guilty to state crimes and to serve a sentence of eighteen months in prison in Florida. In exchange, Alex Acosta, then the American lawyer for the southern district of Florida, promised that his office would not pursue Epstein for federal crimes under investigation. The broader Epstein scandal that exploded in 2018 was triggered by new reports on this romantic agreement, including the government’s failure to inform its victims of the non-prostitution agreement at the time and the extent of Epstein predations. Julie K. Brown, from Miami Heraldidentified approximately eighty victims possible. Epstein had ended up serving only thirteen months, including time in Palm Beach County prison, work release and resistance to houses. In the wake of an important public outcry on the case, which has become an element of the #MeToo movement, the American lawyer for the South New York district charged Epstein for sexual traffic in 2019. Epstein died while he was in federal detention – the Ministry of Justice concluded that he committed suicide – before he could take up a challenge.
After his death, the federal prosecutors charged Maxwell, and he stayed to brandish the 2007 agreement between Epstein and the government-which included the promise that “the United States is also suitable that it will not accumulate any criminal accusation against any potential co-conspirator of Epstein”. Maxwell is undeniably co-conspirator of Epstein with regard to the questions addressed in the agreement. However, federal prosecutors in New York charged him – not feeling linked by the promise of federal prosecutors in Florida either.
Given the slower rate of the indictment, the trial and the appeal, it is only now that the Supreme Court could consider the question that the affair raised from the start: does the agreement of an American lawyer on behalf of the United States links federal prosecutors in other districts? After all, they are all part of the Ministry of Justice, and all represent the United States government in the application of federal law. If not, Maxwell, as a beneficiary of the supply of immunity by the agreement, has the right to have her conviction for sexual trafficking of a minor, for which she was sentenced to the longest sentence, canceled. (It was also found guilty of several other crimes that occurred before the 2001-2007 period covered by the non-payment agreement.) The question extends far beyond Maxwell. At least two appeal lessons – including the second circuit, which rejected Maxwell’s appeal from its convictions – maintains that an agreement only binds the specific office of the American lawyer who is gone to him. At least four appeal courts have taken a contrary position: that the promise of an American lawyer on behalf of the United States links all federal prosecutors, mean that none of them could bear accusations covered by a non-production agreement. The result of the split is that, in addition to the federal prosecutors in Florida who are linked by the Epstein agreement, those, for example, New Jersey, Virginia, California and Iowa – and even the American Virgin Islands, where the island of Epstein was located in New York.
Maxwell asks the Supreme Court to resolve this conflict in favor of the majority of the courts that addressed the issue. As a condemned sexual delinquent serving time for the girls in the milking, she is an unattractive messenger for this request, to say the least. One can imagine the outcry of the defenders of the victims if the court agrees to hear the case of Maxwell. But the only memory of Amicus that the court received is in favor of Maxwell. It was filed by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, which argues that allowing the United States to escape a non-payment agreement “would take prejudice to the entire advocacy system” because “defendants must be able to rely on the written promises made by the government and the confidence that the courts honor and will apply the promises of the road.” The plea negotiations resolve the vast majority of criminal affairs. If a non-procedure agreement on behalf of the United States does not really solve the criminal responsibility of a defendant, these agreements can become much less attractive-a result that neither lawyers nor prosecutors should wish.
But there is a deeper question raised by this affair: what is “the United States”? In our federal system, each of the states is a distinct government with its own laws. At the same time, everyone exists in the United States – a sovereign government whose laws are, in fact, supreme. When the Congress, in the Magistracy Act of 1789, created federal judicial districts, it also provided for the appointment of an American lawyer in each of them, with the responsibility of “continuing in these district crimes” “under the authority of the United States”. (At that time, few crimes would have extended several districts.) Some judges read “in such a district” to signify that, even if federal prosecutors apply the laws of the United States, the actions of an American lawyer do not link colleagues in other districts. This seems reasonable when you imagine the possible chaos of federal prosecutors in each of the eighty-four districts of the country censing linking prosecutors in others. But, since the United States is supposed to be a sovereign with a set of federal law, it may be even more bizarre to imagine that an American lawyer who claims to speak in the name of the United States is in reality only a promise in the name of a single district. As the third circuit said in 2002, while holding these agreements with federal prosecutors in Ohio, prosecution by an American lawyer in Pennsylvania for the same crimes, “the United States lawyers should not be considered as sovereigns of autonomous fiefs”.
In recent months, conflicts between the offices of the Ministry of Justice have spread to the public – for example, when the acting American prosecutor of the South New York district, Danielle Sassoon, resigned rather than obeying Emil Bove’s ordinance, then to the general assistant (and now a third circuit judge) to reject the accusations of corruption against Eric Adams. Sassoon saw no “base of good faith” for the dismissal, because it was in exchange for the agreement of the mayor to carry out the immigration priorities of the administration. Several other federal prosecutors in New York and Washington, DC, have also resigned from the issue. Other prosecutors intervened to do what they would not and asked a district court to reject the case. The court did, “with prejudices”, which means that the accusation cannot be relaunched. But the government had in fact requested a dismissal “without prejudice”, so that the accusations could be resurrected whenever the government wanted, giving Adams more reasons to be useful to the administration. If the government had obtained what it wanted, an involuntary result would have been that – consists of the position of the second circuit in the case of Maxwell – the American prosecutor of the Oriental District, which covers Brooklyn, could have instilled Adams, despite the understanding of the federal prosecutors of the South district, which covers the administration.
Maxwell’s pretension to immunity against prosecution has a certain resemblance to the case of Bill Cosby, in which the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, in 2021, reversed the condemnation for the sexual attacks of Cosby, noting that the promise of the previous prosecutor not to make him inculp (in exchange for the testimony of Cosby in a civil affair) was binding. The two situations implied sexual crimes that the public later came to believe had been treated in a too indulgent manner; The prosecutors then acted unlike the previous agreements in response to the evolution of expectations. Prosecutors who respond to public indignation are not new, but, if there is a lesson here, it is that the galvanization of indignation against specific delinquents can lead to convictions that do not last, because they can dispense with equity that even people who have committed the most reputhensible crimes are due.
