Behind the wait for a verdict at Maxwell jury deliberations
NEW YORK (AP) — The Ghislaine Maxwell sex trafficking trial was a four-week winding road featuring sordid testimony by four women who accused the British socialite of grooming their teenage selves for abuse at the hands of financier Jeffrey Epstein. The defense maintained the abuse could have been real, but Maxwell wasn’t part of it.
It all came to a climax earlier this week with a guilty verdict in federal court in Manhattan, delivered after five full days of jury deliberations.
The jurors’ identities were kept secret. Still, there were clues in the record about who they were and hints about how they reached a decision that hung in the balance for five days amid a surge in COVID-19 cases in New York City that threatened to derail the trial.
Here are some reflections on the players involved and how the deliberations unfolded: