Northeast

Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell asks court to overturn conviction

Published

2 years ago

March 14, 2024

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Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell asks court to overturn conviction

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Lawyers for Ghislaine Maxwell, the 62-year-old accomplice and former lover of the late sex-trafficking financier Jeffrey Epstein, will ask a federal appeals court to throw out her convictions Tuesday.

Maxwell was convicted in federal court in 2021 for her role procuring teen girls as victims for Epstein between 1994 and 2004 and later sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Her appeal is being heard in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. In a brief filed last year, her attorneys asked the court to review the statute of limitations, whether Maxwell’s trial violated a prior non-prosecution agreement, an allegation of juror misconduct, and Maxwell’s sentencing.

JEFFREY EPSTEIN VICTIMS SUE FBI FOR ALLEGED FAILURE TO INVESTIGATE ‘SEX TRAFFICKING RING FOR THE ELITE’

Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell attend an event on March 15, 2005, in New York City. (Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)

Epstein died in federal custody in 2019 while awaiting his own trial. He was 66. Both Maxwell and his brother, Mark Epstein, have publicly doubted the official finding that he hanged himself while alone in his cell.

Maxwell’s lawyers have argued that after Epstein’s death, she became a scapegoat due to outrage over his crimes and the lenient sentence he received in 2008 for a prior sex-trafficking conviction – 13 months with work-release.

Photo from 2001 that was included in court files shows Prince Andrew with his arm around the waist of 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre, who says Jeffrey Epstein paid her to have sex with the prince. Andrew denied the charges. In the background is Epstein’s girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell. (U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals)

FLORIDA GOV RON DESANTIS SIGNS LAW WITH BIG POTENTIAL IMPACT ON EPSTEIN CASE

If her appeal fails, Maxwell isn’t eligible for release until July 2037 on multiple counts of child sex trafficking. She is an inmate at Federal Correctional Institute Tallahassee, a low-security prison in Florida.

Separately, the Epstein saga has received much attention so far in 2024 – with the unsealing of hundreds of documents as part of a civil lawsuit between Maxwell and accuser Virginia Giuffre, a civil lawsuit by a dozen other accusers against the FBI, and a new law in Florida designed to make previously sealed filings in Epstein’s criminal case public.

The unsealed documents cast renewed scrutiny on a number of figures in Epstein’s inner circle, including the United Kingdom’s Prince Andrew.

Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein smile in an undated photograph that was among several unearthed during her sex trafficking trial in the Southern District of New York. (U.S. Department of Justice/Mega)

Epstein got a sweetheart plea deal on federal charges in 2008 in connection with that case and was only charged with more serious crimes in 2019 after a series of Miami Herald reports unveiled the lenient terms of his initial punishment.

The lenient deal also created the non-prosecution agreement cited in Maxwell’s appeal, which protected potential co-conspirators.

Federal prosecutors in New York, however, counter that they are not bound by that deal, which Epstein struck with a former U.S. attorney in Florida. Separately, attorneys for at least one of Epstein’s accusers have argued that the deal should be void because it violates the Crime Victims’ Rights Act.

The new Florida law, taking effect on July 1, will allow grand jury testimony from cases involving dead suspects and crimes against children to be made public.

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Connecticut

Taking a closer look at how fire hydrants maintained across Connecticut

Published

16 minutes ago

April 8, 2026

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Taking a closer look at how fire hydrants maintained across Connecticut

The faulty hydrants after a recent fire in Waterbury are raising questions about how they’re maintained and what the guidelines are.

“It was horrific, because I was sleeping and I was woken out of my sleep,” Michele Philips, a neighbor, said.

It was a scary situation for her, seeing her neighbor’s home on fire on Bennett Street early Tuesday morning, and it was even more frightening when she saw the firefighters struggling to get a nearby hydrant to work.

“No water came out of it at all,” she said.

City officials say multiple hydrants had water flow issues before firefighters found one that was working properly on a different street farther away. That caused a 20-minute delay and is leading to concerns in the community.

“If that happened to us, what would have happened to my own house, and say if the fire had spread,” Philips said.

Waterbury Mayor Paul Pernerewski said the issue likely stemmed from debris stuck in pipes more than 100 years old.

“We have very old pipes underground that eventually build up residue inside that slows the flow,” he said.

“Hydrants have about a 100-year lifespan. So there are a lot of hydrants, especially in your big four cities in Connecticut that are old,” Fire Chief Dan Coughlin with the New Haven Fire Department said.

Coughlin explained that hydrant maintenance varies by location, with no state law requiring a specific number of checks on public hydrants.

“It’s based on their needs, their manpower, for example, as well. So it’s different,” he said.

Coughlin said that in New Haven, hydrants are checked twice a year…and they work with their regional water authority for pressure testing.

“We flush them, we make sure we have good flow coming out of them. We don’t put a gauge on it to see the exact number that we’re getting out of there,” Coughlin said.

The National Fire Protection Association recommends hydrant flow tests every five years. Pernerewski said that he wants to go above that standard. Right now, city workers flush all hydrants every year, but he says they’ll also focus on water pressure testing after realizing that it hadn’t been done for over a decade.

“We’ll now have two folks who can go out and do the testing as well, and we can test while we’re flushing,” he said.

Along with water pressure testing, the mayor said he’s working with the fire department to bring back a color code indicating the pressure at each hydrant.

“Anything 1,500 gallons a minute or higher was painted blue. Green was for those between 1,000 and 1,500, and then red was for those 700 or less,” Pernerewski said.

Philips hopes these changes will mean they’ll have working hydrants.

“We’re talking about people’s lives, and you want to feel good,” she said.

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Maine

2026 Primary Election

Published

1 hour ago

April 7, 2026

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Voting is the cornerstone of democracy, and in 2026 Mainers will have a lot of important decisions to make when casting their ballots — from the very top of the ticket to the bottom. On June 9, Mainers will participate in the state’s semi-open party primaries, choosing Democratic and Republican nominees for governor, as well […]

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Massachusetts

5 firearms seized from Massachusetts home after report of second grader bringing gun to school

Published

2 hours ago

April 7, 2026

Press Room

5 firearms seized from Massachusetts home after report of second grader bringing gun to school

Five firearms were seized from a Swansea, Massachusetts home after police investigated a report that a second-grade student may have brought a handgun to an elementary school.

On Monday night, Swansea police were notified that the student may have brought a gun to Mark G. Hoyle Elementary School and showed it to at least two other students on a previous day.

After an investigation, officers developed probable cause to get a search warrant for the student’s home in Swansea, which was issued by the court and executed Tuesday afternoon.

During the search of the home, police said they found five firearms and ammunition. The guns were not registered and were stored unsecured, police said. No one who lives in the home had a valid Firearms Identification Card, according to police.

“The firearms were seized as part of the investigation, and Swansea Police plan to file an application for criminal complaint in Fall River District Court on Wednesday charging two residents with weapons-related offenses,” Swansea police said in a press release Tuesday night.

The names of the residents have not been released by police.

Police and Swansea Public Schools took additional safety precautions at the school Tuesday morning while officers investigated the report. After the firearms were discovered in the home, a police K-9 unit trained in firearms and ammunition detection swept the school Tuesday night, but nothing was found.

Swansea police do not believe there is an active threat to the school community, but there will be an increased presence at the Hoyle Elementary School on Wednesday. The investigation remains ongoing.

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