Prosecutors have asked that Ghislaine Maxwell receive a prison sentence of between 30-55 years. (file)
New York:
Ghislaine Maxwell, a jailed former socialite, has been placed under suicide watch – despite not being a suicide – according to her lawyers, who said she would proceed to postpone her sentence for sex trafficking if she remained in isolation. Will grow
“Ms Maxwell has been abruptly removed from the general population and returned to solitary confinement” on Friday, attorney Bobby Sternheim wrote in a letter to Judge Alison Nathan on Saturday.
He said he has been denied access to legal documents and time to meet with lawyers and this “prevented him from preparing for sentencing,” which is set for Tuesday.
Sternheim said Maxwell, who was convicted in federal court in New York for helping the late financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse girls, was placed on suicide watch “without psychological evaluation and without justification.”
A psychologist evaluated the 60-year-old on Saturday and “determined he was not suicidal,” he said.
Sternheim said that if Maxwell keeps an eye on the suicide, his lawyers will move on Monday to postpone his sentence.
The Oxford-educated daughter of the late British press baron Robert Maxwell was convicted late last year of five of six sex abuse counts, the most serious of the sex trafficking of minors, and her sentence was an effective life sentence behind bars. amount may be.
Prosecutors have asked that Maxwell receive a prison sentence of between 30 and 55 years.
His lawyers, citing a traumatic childhood and claiming that Maxwell is being unfairly punished because Epstein escaped trial, have called for Nathan to serve a sentence of less than the 20 years recommended by the US Probation Office. .
Epstein killed himself in New York in 2019 while awaiting trial for his own sex crimes.
Maxwell has already been held in custody for some two years following his arrest in New Hampshire in the summer of 2020.
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