The judge in Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking trial in New York has asked jurors to meet for an extra hour each day out of fears of Covid disruption. Judge Alison Nathan asked them to stay until 18:00 (23:00 GMT) instead of 17:00 every day in view of the city’s “astronomical spike” in Covid cases.
The jury resumed deliberations this week after breaking for Christmas. Ms Maxwell, 60, has denied grooming underage girls for abuse by the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. If convicted, she could face decades in prison. She has also pleaded not guilty to two charges of perjury, for which she will be tried separately.
Prosecutors have called the former socialite a “sophisticated predator”, while her lawyers alleged “sensationalism” around her case in their final statements to jurors. Addressing the threat posed by New York’s rising Covid rate, the judge said: “We now face a higher and escalating risk that the jurors and trial participants may need to quarantine.
“We are simply in a different place regarding the pandemic than we were a week ago.” The jurors were not required to have been vaccinated when they were selected. The jury had also been expecting to have Thursday and Friday off, but the judge said that would no longer be the case, Bloomberg reports.
