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Ghislaine Maxwell

Planigale said:
Thank you. As I said I do not understand the issue here. If the decision was made by the judge, why was Maxwell's consent needed? I feel I am missing something very obvious. However seems a trivial issue and not worth pursuing any more. Thanks to those who tried to enlighten me.
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Maxwell's consent isn't needed. Her motion was just one thing the judge took in to account and it's not clear how much her motion mattered in the first place.
 
Arcade22 said:
Wherein comes the apparently acceptable assumption that self-described victims of sexual abuse are incapable of serving as impartial and objective members of the jury?
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Not just sexual abuse. Prospective jurors in a criminal case are asked about any experience they have had with similar crimes, with police officers etc., and if they answer "yes" they may be questioned further about what happened, how long ago, whether they can still be fair and impartial, etc. It is not by itself disqualifying, but simply allows further examination. But answering "no" when it's a lie is a problem.
 
Planigale said:
Thank you. As I said I do not understand the issue here. If the decision was made by the judge, why was Maxwell's consent needed? I feel I am missing something very obvious. However seems a trivial issue and not worth pursuing any more. Thanks to those who tried to enlighten me.
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Guiffre filed a defamation suit against Maxwell. A bunch of documents were entered into the docket for that case. Maxwell had a bunch of stuff in those documents redacted by the court. Guiffre later asked to have those documents unsealed with no redaction. Maxwell objected to having some of that information released and judge agreed to not remove all of the redactions due to the pending criminal case against Maxwell. I haven't looked into it in detail, but presumably that was some of that information could have been self-incriminating.

Now that the criminal trial is over, Guiffre is again asking to have the documents unredacted. Maxwell has said she will not object to that request. Maxwell's consent is not needed, but because she was a party to that lawsuit and was the one who asked for the redaction in the first place, she still has a right to object to Guiffre's request. The eight people whose names would be revealed also have a right to object. The judge will then review the objections and determine what will be unsealed.
 
Bob001 said:
Not just sexual abuse. Prospective jurors in a criminal case are asked about any experience they have had with similar crimes, with police officers etc., and if they answer "yes" they may be questioned further about what happened, how long ago, whether they can still be fair and impartial, etc.
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But why is that? Again it's like there's a unstated assumption that self-described victims of a crime are likely to make poor jury members of such cases. It seems really presumptuous and outright insulting.
 
Bob001 said:
Not just sexual abuse. Prospective jurors in a criminal case are asked about any experience they have had with similar crimes, with police officers etc., and if they answer "yes" they may be questioned further about what happened, how long ago, whether they can still be fair and impartial, etc. It is not by itself disqualifying, but simply allows further examination. But answering "no" when it's a lie is a problem.
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I'm not sure what the precise rules are in federal trials, but in most US jurisdictions, jury selection permits each side a certain number of peremptory challenges. This means that, for example, defence attorneys can reject this number of potential jurors for any reason whatsoever. They don't have to explain why they choose to reject. And over and above this, each side can have a number of "for cause" challenges; in those instances, the attorneys have to explain precisely why they want to exclude this particular juror, and it's up to the trial judge to decide whether the challenge has merit.

So in jury selection for the Maxwell trial, the voir dire and questionnaires for potential jurors were precisely to enable each side to assess which potential jurors they wanted to exclude via peremptory challenge, and which ones they wanted to attempt to exclude via challenge for cause. Had this particular juror truthfully revealed his history as a victim of sexual abuse, it would be a near-certainty that the defence attorneys would either have used one of their peremptory challenges to excuse him, or (if they had already used up their peremptory challenges) they would have attempted a "for cause" dismissal of him.
 
Arcade22 said:
But why is that? Again it's like there's a unstated assumption that self-described victims of a crime are likely to make poor jury members of such cases. It seems really presumptuous and outright insulting.
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The obvious intention is to eliminate jurors who might have an axe to grind, whether as crime victims or for any other reason. The goal is to ensure that the defendant gets a fair trial, not that any particular citizen gets to serve on a jury. And most prospective jurors are grateful to be excused. It's not like jury duty is a sought-after prize.
 
Arcade22 said:
But why is that? Again it's like there's a unstated assumption that self-described victims of a crime are likely to make poor jury members of such cases. It seems really presumptuous and outright insulting.
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Show me someone who's insulted by the facts of conscious and unconscious bias and how these biases influence our judgement, and I'll show you someone you probably don't want to dispassionately judge allegations of your guilt.
 
theprestige said:
Show me someone who's insulted by the facts of conscious and unconscious bias and how these biases influence our judgement, and I'll show you someone you probably don't want to dispassionately judge allegations of your guilt.
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That's not the issue. Plenty of people have an over-emotional reaction that compromises their reasoning towards allegations of sexual abuse and especially "rape", despite never having been a victim of it themselves. I don't see why there would be any reason to specifically single out self-described victims. It's literally holding them to a higher standard.
 
Bob001 said:
The obvious intention is to eliminate jurors who might have an axe to grind, whether as crime victims or for any other reason.
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Yes and that's the objectionable part: victims of a crime are deemed likely to be biased against people who are merely accused of said crime. The jury is supposed to assume that the accused is innocent until it can be proven that they are guilty.

Are victims of crime noticeably more likely to be "unreasonable" in their judgement of the facts in disregarding that the accused is potentially innocent? Are they hostile towards people accused of crimes rather than those who are guilty of them?
 
Arcade22 said:
That's not the issue. Plenty of people have an over-emotional reaction that compromises their reasoning towards allegations of sexual abuse and especially "rape", despite never having been a victim of it themselves. I don't see why there would be any reason to specifically single out self-described victims. It's literally holding them to a higher standard.
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It's an interesting dilemma here, because although I'm pretty sure some people who have been victims of a crime do have some irrational axe to grind, so do plenty who have not been victims. And as someone who thinks of himself as a rational person, I am also pretty sure that some people who have been victims of a real crime have the experience to judge well whether the alleged crime is real.

Historically, at least anecdotally, one hears often that women who are revealed to be promiscuous have difficulty accusing someone of rape, for example, and would likely not be considered a good candidate for a rape case jury. But rationally speaking, would you not think a person who admits to having had numerous experiences of consensual sex, and a long history of not alleging rape, be the very person to trust? If I were a lawyer representing someone accused of rape, I think I'd want the jury to be full of people who are proven to know the difference.
 
Arcade22 said:
That's not the issue. Plenty of people have an over-emotional reaction that compromises their reasoning towards allegations of sexual abuse and especially "rape", despite never having been a victim of it themselves. I don't see why there would be any reason to specifically single out self-described victims. It's literally holding them to a higher standard.
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So what? The goal is to assemble a jury that is not motivated by a private agenda. The questions typically can be extensive. When a defendant is facing maybe decades in prison, maybe even death, a prospective juror's feelings don't matter. You seem to think that jury duty is some kind of contest that everybody can enter. That's not what it's for.
 
Arcade22 said:
That's not the issue. Plenty of people have an over-emotional reaction that compromises their reasoning towards allegations of sexual abuse and especially "rape", despite never having been a victim of it themselves. I don't see why there would be any reason to specifically single out self-described victims. It's literally holding them to a higher standard.
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They literally have a stronger emotional connection to the issue.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
Maxwell is showing signs of cooperating or, at least, no longer being a roadblock.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/17/us/ghislaine-maxwell-john-does/index.html
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RecoveringYuppy said:
It's about revealing the real the names of the eight people identified only as "John Doe" in the 2015 lawsuit. Maxwell is no longer objecting to revealing the names. At least some of those 8 people are continuing to object to their names being revealed.
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Shouldn't the linked article rather refer to them as Johns Doe?
 
I was a witness in a case where a woman was suing my brother's business including a few specific managers. Sexual harassment, wrongful termination and other claims.

The attorney told me during jury selection that one woman said she believed the plaintiff was telling the truth, "Why would she lie?". This juror was sexually abused in the past.

The attorney chose her anyways, and he told me, "This is so lopsided I am confident that I am going to change her mind".

He didn't change her mind one bit, but in the end it didn't matter. She was against all the other 11 jurors in many of the charges, counts whatever. When the jury was polled she'd raise her hand and the rest wouldn't, and vice versa. And she had a defiant look on her face the whole time (my opinion).

Now that's a little different in that this woman said straight up from day one that she believed the plaintiff had a strong case and was telling the truth.

The rest of the the jury disagreed and rightfully so. It was a ridiculous lawsuit. She lied about everything and lost.

I'm not saying I agree that it should matter, just an anecdote.
 
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Juries can be odd. I was on a number of jury panels and only one that went all the way to trial. It was a case of a subcontractor who had been given an oral go-ahead, tooled up for the job, then did not get the contract. He was suing for breach of contract. The contractor was sleazy and not nice at all, and and one felt for the subcontractor, but there was no contract. There's no contract to make a contract. We went round and round on this, but there was one woman who was charmed by the plaintiff's lawyer, whom she thought handsome and eloquent. He was actually an idiot, barely able to grasp what was going on, misunderstanding testimony, asking irrelevant questions, digressing on differences between this and real estate law, that were relevant mainly to a suit that was pending against him for real estate fraud. But for some reason, this older woman was just taken by the guy. Maybe he reminded her of a son or something. The rest of the jurors finally prevailed, through what we thought was sound argument and pointing out what the law in the case was, and how we must judge on the law and not on our sympathy (if it had been sympathy we'd have gone for the plaintiff who did indeed get a raw deal) and brought in a verdict, and later the woman claimed to have been bullied into submission, and a mistrial was called. I don't know how it all ended up after that, except that I'm pretty sure the plaintiff's lawyer ended up in deep water soon after. I moved to Vermont not long after and haven't been called again in over 30 years.

Not that it's all that relevant here, but it does show that you can't always tell when a juror is going to be just stubbornly swayed by something nobody else can understand.
 
Arcade22 said:
Yes and that's the objectionable part: victims of a crime are deemed likely to be biased against people who are merely accused of said crime. The jury is supposed to assume that the accused is innocent until it can be proven that they are guilty.

Are victims of crime noticeably more likely to be "unreasonable" in their judgement of the facts in disregarding that the accused is potentially innocent? Are they hostile towards people accused of crimes rather than those who are guilty of them?
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It's entirely possible for a lawyer making peremptory challenges to be mistaken about what's likely to bias a juror. If so, it's a waste of one of their options and they have an incentive to research it and find out. I bet if you look at the doctrine of such challenges from say 30 years ago, you might find some different ideas prominent that are no longer or never were accurate.
 
smartcooky said:
Good. No doubt they will appeal it, but I expect that will fail as well.

Now we await June 28 for sentencing. I hope the judge throws the book!
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I do not hope the judge throws the book. I think it was boiling a frog that allowed Maxwell to continue her ways, deemed wicked now.
 
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