Supreme Court declines Maxwell appeal, keeps 20-year sentence

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to review Ghislaine Maxwell's appeal of her federal sex trafficking conviction, leaving the 2021 verdict and her 20 year prison sentence in place. Maxwell, a former associate of Jeffrey Epstein, had asked the nation's highest court to consider arguments that prosecutors should not have brought the case against her in New York.

The court's brief order did not include an explanation, consistent with its routine practice of issuing lists of denied and granted petitions without comment. With the denial, Maxwell's avenues for overturning the conviction through the appellate process are effectively exhausted, barring an extraordinary legal development or executive clemency.

Maxwell's lawyers had urged the justices to find that a 2007 nonprosecution agreement between Epstein and federal prosecutors in Florida shielded Epstein and potential co‑conspirators from subsequent federal prosecution. They also contended that statutes of limitations had expired for some counts. The Department of Justice, represented to the court by the Solicitor General, opposed that reading and argued the Florida agreement would not have applied to prosecutions brought...