NEW YORK — Ghislaine Maxwell has been placed on suicide watch at a Brooklyn jail, and will search to delay her Tuesday sentencing for aiding Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of underage women, her lawyer stated on Saturday evening.
In a letter to the decide overseeing Maxwell’s case, Maxwell’s lawyer, Bobbi Sternheim, stated her shopper is “unable to correctly put together, for sentencing,” after officers on the Metropolitan Detention Heart on Friday declared the suicide watch and abruptly moved Maxwell to solitary confinement.
Sternheim stated Maxwell was given a “suicide smock,” and her clothes, toothpaste, cleaning soap and authorized papers had been taken away.
The lawyer additionally stated Maxwell “shouldn’t be suicidal,” a conclusion she stated a psychologist who evaluated the 60-year-old British socialite on Saturday morning additionally reached.
“If Ms. Maxwell stays on suicide watch, is prohibited from reviewing authorized supplies previous to sentencing, turns into sleep-deprived, and is denied enough time to satisfy with and seek advice from counsel, we shall be formally transferring on Monday for an adjournment,” Sternheim wrote.
A spokesman for U.S. Lawyer Damian Williams in Manhattan, whose workplace prosecuted Maxwell, declined to remark.
Epstein, 66, killed himself in August 2019 in a Manhattan jail cell, the place the financier was awaiting trial for intercourse trafficking.
Maxwell was convicted on Dec. 29 on 5 legal counts, together with intercourse trafficking, for recruiting and grooming 4 women for Epstein to abuse between 1994 and 2004.
Prosecutors have stated Maxwell ought to spend at the least 30 years in jail, citing her “utter lack of regret.” Maxwell desires a time period shorter than 20 years.
The sentence shall be imposed by U.S. Circuit Choose Alison Nathan in Manhattan federal courtroom.
Maxwell has been held within the Brooklyn jail since shortly after her July 2020 arrest.
Her attorneys objected a number of instances earlier than trial concerning the confinement circumstances there, together with final November when Sternheim likened them to Hannibal Lecter’s from the 1991 Oscar-winning movie “The Silence of the Lambs.”
