Maxwell Attempt to Call Prosecutorial Experts Stymied by Judge
Maxwell Judge Rules That Two of Her Experts Can’t Testify
(Bloomberg) -- Ghislaine Maxwell hopes of putting the government on trial were stymied by a judge who ruled the socialite can’t have a nationally-renowned expert on prosecutorial misconduct testify at her sex-trafficking trial.
U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan barred Maxwell from calling Bennett Gershman, a professor at Pace Law School in White Plains, New York. In his 1985 treatise, Gershman reviewed thousands of criminal cases and focused on wrongful convictions and prosecutorial ethics and Maxwell had wanted him to testify about the “the integrity of any prosecution.”
Maxwell is scheduled to go on trial Nov. 29. Her lawyers have argued that prosecutors ignored a 2008 non-prosecution agreement which her former boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein got from federal authorities in Florida, which she says protected her from prosecution. She has sought to argue before the jury that the U.S. only charged her after Epstein’s death in 2019 while awaiting sex-trafficking charges of his own, arguing she is Epstein’s “proxy.”
Nathan also rejected Maxwell’s request to call Ryan Hall, a forensic psychiatrist, but the subject matter on which Hall was to testify to isn’t public.
Two experts, including psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, who testified about victims’ “false memories” at the trials of Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby and forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz, who was a prosecution expert in the trials of “Unabomber” Theodore Kaczynski and would-be Ronald Reagan assassin John Hinckley Jr. will be allowed to give limited testimony, although what they’ll be able to say is under seal.
Nathan also said she needs more information from Maxwell’s team before she’ll rule whether four other experts can testify at the trial.
Maxwell is charged with conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse minors.
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