Judge Rejects Ghislaine Maxwell’s Bid for New Trial

A judge in an order released on Aug. 25 said that a petition from Ghislaine Maxwell to overturn her sex trafficking conviction did not have merit.

“Nearly all its claims are procedurally barred; the overwhelming testimonial and documentary evidence adduced at trial conclusively established her guilt; and her petition’s claims are demonstrably meritless, and generally based on speculation, distortions, and/or outright falsehoods,” Judge Paul A. Engelmayer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York said in the 67-page decision.

“There is no fact that Maxwell fairly puts in dispute that has any potential to disturb the outcome of her trial.”

A lawyer representing Maxwell did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

Maxwell, 64, was an associate of Jeffrey Epstein—who was convicted of procuring a minor for prostitution and faced other charges when he committed suicide in prison in 2019—from 1994 until at least 2004, according to documents and other evidence introduced at her trial.

Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of participating in a conspiracy with Epstein that targeted minors for illegal sex acts. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence.

A federal appeals court in 2024 upheld the sentence, and the Supreme Court in 2025 denied Maxwell’s request to review that ruling.

Maxwell said, in a petition filed under Section 2255 of the U.S. Code to overturn her conviction, that the release of materials following the appeal process should result in her conviction being vacated, including a transcript of testimony given to a grand jury in 2006 by a police detective who investigated Epstein.

The detective said then, according to the transcript, that a massage table was in a bathroom. Maxwell said that the detective testified that it was the north bathroom, which was different from the south bathroom he had identified at her trial.

The detective did not actually specify a bathroom in the 2006 testimony, though, the judge said in the new ruling.

Even if he had offered conflicting testimony as to the location of the massage table, Maxwell did not show that it would have been perjury rather than an inadvertent mistake.

“And had there been such an inconsistency between Detective Parkinson’s 2006 and 2021 testimony as to this particular, such would have been highly unlikely to impeach Detective Parkinson’s credibility, given that the search had occurred more than 16 years before his trial testimony, and his testimony in general, and about finding the massage table in the house in particular, was corroborated by other testimonial, documentary, and video evidence,” the judge said.

That means it would not have had “a material effect on the outcome of the trial,” he said.