Ghislaine Maxwell's Lawyer Believes She Should Be Freed Following Bill Cosby Release Due To Alleged Promise Prosecutors Made To Jeffrey Epstein
Ghislaine Maxwell's lawyer believes she deserves the same treatment as Bill Cosby.
As OK! previously reported, Cosby saw his 2018 conviction overturned on Wednesday, June 30, after serving almost three years of a three to ten-year sentence. In 2018, he was found guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault and convicted of drugging and molesting Andrea Constand in 2004.
The release was "on a procedural issue that is irrelevant to the facts of the crime." District Attorney Kevin Steele said that he was obligated to stand by a predecessor’s deal with Cosby not to charge him.
The technicality tied back to 2005, when state prosecutors decided not to charge Cosby after investigating Constand's allegations. At the time, the district attorney reportedly said that if Cosby went through with depositions in separate civil lawsuits, he would not face a criminal trial. Years later, a new prosecutor reopened the case and Cosby was arrested shortly before the statute of limitations was due to expire in 2015.
Meanwhile, Maxwell is awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center following her July 2020 arrest.
In light of Cosby's overturned conviction, a lawyer for the ex-socialite believes she should also be freed because a prosecutor once allegedly "promised [Jeffrey] Epstein when he pleaded guilty that they would not prosecute her."
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"In her case, Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty and struck a bargain with the prosecutors in Miami: In exchange for pleading guilty in state court, the U.S. attorney's office agreed that it would not prosecute any of his alleged co-conspirators," her lawyer David Oscar Markus wrote in a Daily News opinion piece.
According to Markus, Maxwell is accused of being one of Epstein's co-conspirators 25 years ago but has maintained her innocence. As such, he believes she should not have to face trial in November.
"When Epstein agreed to plead guilty and go to state prison, the United States agreed not to prosecute him or his alleged co-conspirators. This is in black and white: 'the United States ... will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein,'" Markus wrote.
"Just like in Cosby's case, the New York prosecutors want to use Maxwell's depositions against her even though the government had said there would be no charges," Markus said. "The trial court, just like the trial court and intermediate appellate court in Cosby's case, has agreed to let the government out of its deal."
According to Markus, "the case against Ghislaine Maxwell is extremely weak" because it's "based on 25-year-old, uncorroborated allegations made only after Epstein died." As previously reported by OK!, Maxwell faces eight counts of charges pertaining to the alleged abuse of minors and her involvement with Epstein.
"A jury should reject those flimsy and stale charges," Markus wrote. "But in the event of a conviction, she should get relief on appeal for the same reason Cosby did — prosecutors should have to live up to the deals they make. As that court explained: 'A contrary result would be patently untenable. It would violate long-cherished principles of fundamental fairness. It would be antithetical to, and corrosive of, the integrity and functionality of the criminal justice system that we strive to maintain.'"
