Maxwell attorney asks judge for new trial after juror acknowledges being sexually abused as child

The attorney for convicted felon Ghislaine Maxwell says his client deservers a new trial, considering revelations Wednesday by a juror in the recent trail that he had been a victim of sexual abuse.

In a letter to U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan, who presided over Maxwell's trial in New York’s Manhattan, attorney Christian Everdell said there were "incontrovertible grounds" for Maxwell to get a new trial, according to Reuters.

Maxwell, 60, was convicted Dec. 29 of sex trafficking and other charges for recruiting and grooming underage girls for wealth financier and one-time boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein to abuse from 1994 to 2004.

Epstein died in a Manhattan jail in August 2019 awaiting trial on similar charges. 

Everdell said the juror's disclosure "influenced the deliberations and convinced other members of the jury to convict Ms. Maxwell."

The judge's decision on whether a new trial is warranted could depend on how the juror responded to questions during jury selection about his experiences with sexual abuse. Legal experts said whether a juror had been sexually abused was a key question that defense lawyers were looking at to weed out potentially biased jurors, the wire service also reports. 

The office of U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, which prosecuted Maxwell, declined to comment.

The juror, who asked to be identified by his first and middle names, Scotty David, said Tuesday that during deliberations, after some jurors expressed skepticism about the accounts of two of Maxwell's accusers, he shared his experience of having been sexually abused as a child, Reuters also reports.