Why I Went to Jury Selection for Ghislaine Maxwell's Trial
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“Juror Number 14,” began Judge Alison J. Nathan. “Do you have any negative feelings about affluent people?”
There was a long pause.
“What’s that mean?” the juror responded. “May I ask your first language?” Nathan prodded. Juror 14 responded that her mother tongue was, in fact, English, and curiously she was dismissed. The jury selection process at Ghislaine Maxwell's sex trafficking trial in U.S. District Court in Manhattan continued.
My best friend Vanessa and I have been obsessed with the entire Maxwell/Jeffrey Epstein story from the start, and last week we decided to go witness the hearing by which jurors are selected for the upcoming trial at the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse, sitting in the back of the room like a modern-day Statler and Waldorf.
Since the scandal broke back in 2019, when Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges, through Maxwell's own arrest last summer on multiple criminal charges related to his trafficking and sexual abuse of young women and girls, Vanessa and I texted each other articles, conspiracy theories, and Instagram memes, theorizing that our fascination stems from our tenuous proximity to The Accused. Emphasis on tenuous.
My mom once sat next to Maxwell in the pedicure chair at her neighborhood joint on Lexington Avenue and conversed casually. A classmate of Vanessa’s from school was snapped at various Epstein bashes. Through two degrees of Kevin Bacon, we must know dozens of people who encountered these monsters. Everybody does.
At the courthouse, everyone had their own hypotheses about the case, like we were starring in our own Only Murders in the Building instead of witnessing a real-life prosecution. Lurid cases like this one have the effect on the public, have since time immemorial. A chatty bailiff confided he thought the idea that Epstein “offed himself” was fishy at best, a well-plotted conspiracy of murder at worst. In interviews, Maxwell's siblings claim the outrage and disgust leveled at Epstein has been unfairly transferred onto his one-time lover, who allegedly procured and groomed underage girls for the late financier and shuttled them in his private jet known as “The Lolita Express” to Little Saint James, itself dubbed “Island of Sin.” Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to the crimes alleged against her.
The details of the case are so weird it's hard to look away. An FBI raid of the slimeball’s East 71st Street mansion revealed a box of sex toys (including something called “Twin Torpedoes”) that Epstein and Ghislaine supposedly used in menages-à-trois with the young women. The underage victims, four testifying in total, seem to be a tiny percentage of Epstein and Maxwell's myriad alleged victims, those manipulated and abused throughout their decades-long relationship that she claims ended in 2013.
Now, as he rots in the seventh layer of Hades next to dead despots, warlords, and whomever wrote the “1-877-Kars-4-Kids” jingle, the emotional wreckage Epstein left in his wake is laser beam focused on his former girlfriend.
Vanessa, who has a Masters in Forensic Psychology and can rattle off facts about every killer and knows Robert Chambers’s parole date off the top of her head, and I, a curious writer always in the search for material, hatched a plan to go observe the trail after a court order declared it would be partially open to the public. (The curious, and members of the press, may access the live audio feed of the proceeding by calling 844-721-7237 and using access code 9991787.) Vanessa was also looking for an excuse to try her hand at the curious art of courtroom sketching.
As we climbed the famed steps at 40 Foley Square, we got full-body chills. My mind flickered back to scenes of Sam Waterston descending the same path, and the busybody who once reminded during my single days me to go out more because “your husband isn’t going to fly through the window while you’re watching Law & Order.” And now, here we were, rushing past those same iconic columns.
We filled out a brief survey about Covid health, de-shoed and went through TSA-level security, handing in our phones, which were then checked into small cubbies. Vanessa’s iWatch was also confiscated, and we were given metal chips with hammered-in numbers as claim tags. Despite the beautiful setting inside this gorgeous courthouse, we both felt unnerved by the proceedings. There was the matter of the case's disturbing nature, but also the meticulous legal choreography involved in deciding someone's fate, and the un-glamorous, sausage-making look at the judicial system in action, up close and personal. This was no Dick Wolf procedural, but the real deal.
After we took our seats with our Friends of The Costume Institute notepads neatly placed on our laps, Judge Nathan began the hearing to choose from a pool of some 230 prospective jurors. Maxwell, in a black suit, observed, her likeness more professionally rendered by an illustrator from the Associated Press.
The jurors were asked about their personal lives, their households, reading habits, and if they were familiar with the particulars of the case. As shocking as it sounded when some of the jurors claimed they didn't know much about Epstein or Maxwell, I actually believed them. If they were informed about the scandal, they were asked whether they believed they could be unbiased and focus on the evidence presented.
As for the question about negative feelings towards the wealthy, one of the jurors, an attractive, opera-loving cater waiter for a top company replied, “How could I hate the affluent? They provide my livelihood!” Other respondents were worlds away from Epstein and his private air travel between his New Mexico ranch and private islands, and maybe that's for the best.
A single mother taking care of her young daughter said she barely watches any TV besides Nickelodeon, and we wondered if the defense attorneys would whittle her out of the jury pool. It felt impossible to imagine any parents on those benches who wouldn’t bristle in horror at what’s undoubtedly about to unfold in the coming six-week saga.
Maxwell's trial is set to begin after Thanksgiving on November 29, with 12 jurors and six alternates.
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