Ghislaine Maxwell requests Supreme Court to reverse her conviction

Background: FILE – The Supreme Court of the United States in Washington, March 26, 2024 (AP Photo/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades, File). Inset: UNITED STATES – MARCH 4: President Donald Trump delivering an address to Congress in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, March 4, 2025 (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images). Inset top: Ghislaine Maxwell (DOJ). Inset bottom: FILE – Jeffrey Epstein, March 28, 2017 (New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP, File).

Ghislaine Maxwell filed a 159-page petition on the deadline allowed by the judges, seeking the U.S. Supreme Court’s intervention to overturn her sex-trafficking conviction. She argues that based on a non-prosecution agreement the government made with her former partner, Jeffrey Epstein, she should not have been prosecuted.

Aged 63, Maxwell was found guilty in 2021 of five charges related to sex trafficking and grooming minors for Epstein’s exploitation. She received a 20-year prison sentence for these offenses. Epstein passed away in prison before his trial could take place.

Following Maxwell’s conviction, she unsuccessfully appealed, having argued that a 2007 plea deal between Epstein and the federal government made in the Southern District of Florida protected her — even though she was not a party to the deal and her prosecution was taking place in the Southern District of New York. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled that it was “well established” law that a plea agreement “binds only the office of the United States Attorney for the district in which the plea is entered unless it affirmatively appears that the agreement contemplates a broader restriction,” and that no such indication was present in Maxwell’s case.

Maxwell initially had until Feb. 23 to file an appeal with the nation’s highest court, but a few weeks before the filing was due, the deadline was extended by Justice Sonia Sotomayor until April 10, after Maxwell said she had hired a new lawyer just one day earlier.

In Maxwell’s petition, her attorney called the case “the perfect vehicle” to resolve a split among the circuits over whether, in disputes like Maxwell’s, “United States” refers to the federal government broadly, or prosecutors in a specific jurisdiction more narrowly. It goes on to argue that a promise made in a plea agreement by one set of federal prosecutors should be binding on prosecutors from a different jurisdiction.

“A defendant should be able to rely on a promise that the United States will not prosecute again, without being subject to a gotcha in some other jurisdiction that chooses to interpret that plain language promise in some other way,” it said in the brief.

Maxwell is a British former socialite who is the daughter of British media proprietor and fraudster Robert Maxwell.

Throughout Maxwell’s prosecution, information surfaced relating to connections between Maxwell, Epstein, and President Donald Trump, including testimony from one of Maxwell’s victims that Epstein introduced her to Trump at Mar-a-Lago when she was just 14 years old. The conservative-leaning Court — which includes three justices appointed by Trump — will now have the chance to decide whether Maxwell’s case is one in which they wish to become involved.

“This is an important issue and we are hopeful that the Supreme Court takes the case,” said Maxwell’s attorney, David Oscar Markus, in an email to Law&Crime Friday. “Ghislaine never should have been charged as the federal government gave her immunity. To say that it only applies in one jurisdiction and not another makes no sense as a matter of law or common sense.”

You can read the full filing here.