Ghislaine Maxwell trial

Oh yea, up to the Jury, who have been 80 pages of instructions that will make it impossible to agree. All part of the fix, Judge will make sure his instructions are impossible to come to a conclusion with.

You know you have a constitutional right to silence in Ireland? More extensive than the 5th. amendment.

But criminals in Ireland prefer to lie through their teeth, with bonus points for lying to the Gardai and double bonus for lying from the witness stand.

Maxwell will most likely be convicted and will immediately appeal. She has ample material and could go all the way to the Supreme Court (e.g. unique characteristics of the “trafficking” offence, refusal of bail under any circumstances, “repressed memories” as evidence, two of the four witnesses were not underage) .

But decades of legal arguments will not answer the central question (which this trial was designed to avoid) - what was Epstein’s game?

They have her on the 14 year old, the older women are just proof of what happened during the massages. There is no grey area for a girl that young, she’s going to jail.

Very powerful men are involved, their influence goes beyond the court room she's trialed in. It's the same as the Police in the UK refusing to arrest Prince Andrew. You really think it's the police that came to that decision? Come on.

According to The Sunday Times, Maxwell's lawyers are already preparing for an appeal, the grounds for which may include the supposed impairment imposed by Covid restrictions on the lawyers' ability to do their jobs. But they've had the best part of 2 years to study the statements made against her and to gather witnesses for the defence - so I don't see what the amount of time they got to talk to her when visiting her in prison has to do with lawyers' ability to do their jobs. A lawyer is either good at it or not good at it - regardless of the amount of money paid.

The jurors in this case appear to be highly conscientious but jurors need nerves of steel to do their duty in high profile American cases. A “wrong” verdict can spark full scale riots if race is at issue. In this case, which raises #MeToo issues, a not guilty verdict could lead to media sieges of the jurors in their homes. A guilty verdict would be much “ easier” for jurors - talkative jurors might even get sympathetic media interviews. Oprah! Ellen! The full Megan Markle for their 15 minutes.

The media recently won access to the jurors in the Derek Chauvin/George Floyd trial. Mercifully, that case was proven beyond reasonable doubt.

In Ireland, the jury’s deliberations are confidential and leaks are liable to contempt of court. The biggest problem here is jurors know that vital evidence will have been excluded on legal grounds. Imagine acquitting someone and reading afterwards in the Indo or the Sun that he’s a serial abuser! Evidence of past crimes is almost always excluded in Ireland unless there is a clear link.

We solved the jury intimidation problem here with the Special Criminal Court but there is now a real problem here with media and social media contaminating the jury. Are we the only country whose Head of Government escaped justice because ore-trial comments by the Deputy Prime Minister we’re deemed to have prejudiced a fair trial?

Dark clothing and yellowed leathery looking skin. As you said, just add some horns and be done with it.

Elizabeth Holmes - awwww...

You've convinced me; Maxwell is obviously guilty and Holmes is innocent.

It’s true that the Federal courts operate differently- hence we are not seeing inside the court - but it still takes guts for a juror to go against the media tide.

Yes, the jury are sent out while the lawyers debate admissibility. That means they know they are not being told everything but they can only guess was evidence is kept from them. Our courts exclude an extraordinary range of evidence, including anything deemed to be obtained “illegally”. So all Irish jurors know that, after their verdict, the media will publish evidence which was excluded.

Would our courts have admitted the testimony of the two witnesses who were shown not to be minors when Epstein had sex with them?

My answer to your question is: Probably not.

If a similar case took place back here and the defendant was acquitted, wouldn't the inadmissible evidence be kept confidential?

The jury takes a break for Christmas.

Good to see that they are not rushing to judgement. Not sure how they can avoid all the media around this trial but that is always a problem.

Before the trial, everyone was expecting many weeks of testimony. Now, many are surprised that there wasn’t a verdict before Christmas.