The final jury was selected on Monday morning for Ghislaine Maxwell‘s sex trafficking trial hours before opening statements are expected to begin, the Associated Press reported.
The anonymous 12 jurors and six alternates were finalized earlier Monday morning by U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan. The jurors were a part of an initial pool of 600 candidates. Nathan reduced the candidates down to 40 to 60 potential jurors where the final 12 jurors and six alternates were selected.
Maxwell’s lawyer previously asked the judge for the jury questionnaire and the oral questions of the jurors to be placed under seal. The judge denied that request. However, the judge did agree to allow the jurors to only be identified by number to protect privacy, something that is common in federal trials, Law and Crime reported.
The jurors will remain anonymous throughout the trial and will only be referred to by their numbers. They are expected to listen to opening statements later in the day Monday. The trial is expected to last six weeks.
Maxwell, 59, has pleaded not guilty to the charges brought against her. She is accused of recruiting and grooming girls as young as 14-years-old to be abused by Jeffrey Epstein between 1994 to 2004.
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below:
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The charges against Maxwell stemmed from the allegations of four women who said she and Epstein victimized them as teens from 1994 to 2004.
Prosecutors said there’s evidence Maxwell knew that the victims, including a 14-year-old, were below the age of consent and that she arranged travel for some between Epstein’s homes, including his estate in Palm Beach, Florida, his posh Manhattan townhouse and at other residences in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and London.
Epstein killed himself at a Manhattan federal lockup in August 2019, a month after his arrest on sex trafficking charges. Authorities charged Maxwell in July 2020, arresting her after tracking her to a $1 million New Hampshire estate where she had been holed up during the coronavirus pandemic.
Maxwell vehemently denies any wrongdoing. The British socialite, jailed in Brooklyn since her arrest, has called the claims against her “absolute rubbish.” Maxwell’s lawyers and family said she was Epstein’s pawn, now paying “a blood price” to satisfy public desire to see someone held accountable for his crimes.
The wealthy, Oxford-educated Maxwell is the daughter of British newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell, who died in 1991 after falling off his yacht—named the Lady Ghislaine—near the Canary Islands. Robert Maxwell, whose holdings at the time included the New York Daily News, was facing allegations that he had illegally looted his businesses’ pension funds.
Ghislaine Maxwell holds U.S., British and French citizenships and was repeatedly denied bail in the run-up to her trial.
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