The judge in Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking trial in New York has asked jurors to meet for deliberations every day out of fears of Covid disruption.
Citing the city’s “astronomical spike” in Covid cases, Judge Alison Nathan said she needed them to meet “every day forward until they reach a verdict”.
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.
REUTERS- Ghislaine Maxwell speaking to a defence lawyer on Tuesday (courtroom sketch)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 been expecting to have Thursday and Friday off.
Coronavirus cases in New York have soared from an average of about 3,400 a day in the week ending 12 December, to 22,000 in the week ending 26 December, the Associated Press reports.
She pointed out that the jury was continuing to request transcripts of trial testimony and other materials that indicated they were working diligently.
Tuesday is the fourth full day of deliberations in the trial as the jury considers six charges against Ms Maxwell, which allege she played a role in Epstein’s sexual abuse of teenage girls between 1994 and 2004.
Epstein was found dead in a jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.
Ms Maxwell, a socialite and daughter of the late British media tycoon Robert Maxwell, has been held in a US prison without the chance of bail since her arrest in July 2020.
BBC
