US judge has upheld the sex trafficking conviction of British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and denied her motion for a new trial.
The 60-year-old had requested a retrial after it emerged that one of the jurors in her trial had failed to disclose he was a victim of sexual abuse.
Her lawyers had argued it meant the trial “was not fair and impartial”.
But Judge Alison Nathan declined to order a new trial weeks after questioning the juror under oath in a New York courtroom.
She said the juror’s failure to disclose his prior sexual abuse during the jury selection process was highly unfortunate, but not deliberate.
Maxwell, who was labelled “dangerous” by the prosecution during her three-week trial in New York, was found guilty in December last year of enticing vulnerable teenagers to Jeffrey Epstein’s various properties for him to sexually abuse between 1994 and 2004.