Jeffrey Epstein injuries ‘far more consistent with murder than suicide’, lawyer says
Jeffrey Epstein’s injuries were more consistent with murder than suicide, an expert hired by his family has claimed.
Lawyers for Epstein spoke alongside prosecutors at a court hearing on Tuesday.
The financier died in his Manhattan prison cell on 10 August and a New York City coroner has ruled his death was a suicide by hanging.
Epstein had been awaiting trial on federal charges of sex trafficking, to which he had pleaded not guilty.
But Martin Weinberg, one of the financier’s lawyers, claimed the expert had concluded the injuries found on the 66-year-old’s neck were more consistent with homicide than suicide.
The lawyer asked Richard Berman, the judge presiding over the hearing, to look into the matter.
A prosecutor argued the judge would not have jurisdiction.
”I think it’s fair game for defence counsel to raise its concerns,” Mr Berman said.
“We want the court to help us find out what happened,” Reid Weingarten, another Epstein lawyer, claimed, according to CNBC.
He added that the team had “significant doubts” about the coroner’s “conclusion of suicide".
“We did not see a despairing, despondent, suicidal person,” he said, describing meetings between the legal team and Epstein shortly before the financier’s death.
Epstein, a convicted sex offender, had pleaded not guilty to charges he sex trafficked women in the early 2000s.
More than a dozen women spoke at Tuesday’s hearing, describing the sexual abuse they said they had suffered at Epstein’s hands.
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Many said this was the closest they would come to getting their day in court.
Brad Edwards, a lawyer who represents a number of the women, said Epstein’s “untimely death” was “curious”.
He added: “More so, it makes it absolutely impossible for the victims to ever get the day in court that they wanted, and to get full justice. That now can never happen.”
One woman, who asked not to be identified, told the court: “We do need to know how he died. It felt like a whole new trauma … It didn’t feel good to wake up that morning and find that he allegedly committed suicide.”
Additional reporting by agencies
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