The Manhattan federal judge who presided over Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking trial will question one of the jurors who convicted her at a hearing next month.
The British socialite’s legal team had requested a new trial after Juror No. 50, also known as Scotty David, claimed in media interviews that his experience with sexual abuse helped to sway fellow panelists during deliberations. Maxwell’s motion for a new trial, unsealed on Thursday, revealed the juror checked “no” to questions asking whether he had been the victim of a crime and if he had experienced sexual harassment, sexual abuse, or assault.
Maxwell’s lawyers argue that Scotty never disclosed his history of abuse on his jury questionnaire or during the jury selection process of voir dire and therefore “violated” her right to a fair trial.
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While Judge Alison Nathan has denied Maxwell’s request for a retrial, she scheduled a hearing for March 8, when she will question the juror under oath about his answers during jury selection.
“Following trial, Juror 50 made several direct, unambiguous statements to multiple media outlets about his own experience that do not pertain to jury deliberations and that cast doubt on the accuracy of his responses during jury selection,” Nathan wrote in her order on Thursday. “Juror 50’s post-trial statements are ‘clear, strong, substantial and incontrovertible evidence that a specific, nonspeculative impropriety’—namely, a false statement during jury selection—has occurred.”
She added, “To be clear, the potential impropriety is not that someone with a history of sexual abuse may have served on the jury. Rather, it is the potential failure to respond truthfully to questions during the jury selection process that asked for that material information so that any potential bias could be explored.”
In late December, Maxwell was convicted of grooming girls for Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring. Four victims of the multimillionaire testified against her. Weeks later, Juror No. 50’s lawyer filed a memorandum requesting a copy of the jury questionnaire and voir dire testimony, stating that Scotty “does not recall answering questions regarding his prior experience with sexual assault.”
Maxwell’s unsealed motion for a new trial, filed in January, stated that Juror No. 50—who was among nearly 700 prospective panelists to fill out a 22-page questionnaire—gave multiple press interviews saying he persuaded the jury “to believe Ms. Maxwell’s accusers, despite the inconsistencies and holes in their stories.”
“This was unfair and prejudicial to Ms. Maxwell, and it all would have been avoided if Juror No. 50 had told the truth during voir dire. But he didn’t,” lawyers for the heiress wrote. “To the contrary, Juror No. 50 repeatedly and unequivocally denied having been the victim of sexual abuse, and he denied having any experience that would affect his ability to serve fairly and impartially as a juror. Had Juror No. 50 told the truth, he would have been challenged, and excluded, for cause.”
The motion also cited the juror’s interviews with Reuters, The Independent, and the Daily Mail—for which he gave a video interview and was asked about his jury questionnaire. Maxwell’s team submitted the video clip as an exhibit.
“The video shows the moment when the interviewer confronts Juror No. 50 about whether he disclosed to the Court and the parties that he was a victim of sexual assault,” Maxwell’s lawyers wrote. “The interviewer asks whether Juror No. 50’s history of being sexually abused was ‘something that [he’d] said yes to in the questionnaire’ such that it ‘was something people were aware of when [he was] selected as a juror.’”
The juror, however, denied being asked that question: “No, they don’t ask your sexual abuse history. They didn’t ask it in the questionnaire.”
The defense lawyers argued the juror “acted intentionally” and his face turning red in the footage proves it. Scotty David, Maxwell’s team says, “grasped for words when the Daily Mail reporter told him about Question 48,” which inquired whether jurors had been victims of sexual abuse.
They also point to Scotty’s media tour “to promote himself, his experience as a victim, and his role on the jury.”
“Juror No. 50’s publicity tour appears to have stopped (at least temporarily) only because the government publicly filed a letter asking this Court to inquire into Juror No. 50’s truthfulness and suggesting that he needed a lawyer,” Maxwell's attorneys argued. “The clear message from the government to Juror No. 50 was to stop talking.”
“Juror No. 50 has not shunned the limelight,” they added. “He has reveled in it.”
Maxwell had also requested a hearing for a second juror who told The New York Times that they also failed to disclose a history of childhood sexual abuse on the pre-trial questionnaire. Nathan denied Maxwell’s request to question the second juror, as well as the remaining panelists, in court.
“To date, this juror has not publicly revealed their identity, and Ms. Maxwell does not know who it is,” the defense wrote.
Meanwhile, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) filed an amicus brief on Thursday in support of Maxwell’s request for a retrial, claiming Juror No. 50’s media interviews showed he was “biased and unfit to serve.”
“The reality of an unbiased jury is a structural prerequisite for a fair trial and, particularly in a notorious case such as this that has attracted international attention, the appearance that a fair and impartial jury has decided the defendant’s fate is essential for public respect for and acceptance of the outcome,” the organization stated.
“Imagine that a juror had failed to reveal profound bias against law enforcement, been permitted to sit on the jury and, after an acquittal, trumpeted her role in interviews with the press. The public would be asking what is wrong with the American trial process that could allow such a thing to happen, and the government would be investigating the juror for perjury.”
The group’s brief also argued that jurors are “incentivized to lie” more than ever before. “Prospective jurors now have more reason to lie than they did in the past because they know that sitting as jurors in a high-profile trial may bring them fame, prestige, and even profit,” NACDL wrote. “We live in an age of reality television in which the ‘true crime’ genre is dominant. Jurors often find themselves instant celebrities.”
“They are interviewed by the press and talk shows, and often seek to profit by writing books,” NACDL added. “This has given rise to the so-called ‘stealth juror’ who deliberately lies or evades full disclosure of bias to get on a jury.”
“The Court should not allow any juror to thwart its screening process by giving inaccurate answers and thereby create such a grave potential, realized in this case, for depriving the defendant of her right to a fair trial,” the brief concluded. “A new trial is required.”
