Ghislaine Maxwell put on suicide watch, may seek sentencing delay, lawyer says

By Jonathan Stempel

NEWYORK – 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 mentioned on Saturday night time.

In a letter to the choose overseeing Maxwell’s case, Maxwell’s lawyer, Bobbi Sternheim, mentioned her consumer is “unable to correctly put together, for sentencing,” after officers on the Metropolitan Detention Middle on Friday declared the suicide watch and abruptly moved Maxwell to solitary confinement.

Sternheim mentioned Maxwell was given a “suicide smock,” and her clothes, toothpaste, cleaning soap and authorized papers have been taken away.

The lawyer additionally mentioned Maxwell “will not be suicidal,” a conclusion she mentioned 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 disadvantaged, and is denied adequate time to fulfill with and check with 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 prison counts, together with intercourse trafficking, for recruiting and grooming 4 women for Epstein to abuse between 1994 and 2004.

Prosecutors have mentioned Maxwell ought to spend no less than 30 years in jail, citing her “utter lack of regret.” Maxwell needs a time period shorter than 20 years.

The sentence shall be imposed by U.S. Circuit Choose Alison Nathan in Manhattan federal court docket.

Maxwell has been held within the Brooklyn jail since shortly after her July 2020 arrest.

Her legal professionals objected a number of occasions earlier than trial in regards to the confinement situations there, together with final November when Sternheim likened them to Hannibal Lecter’s from the 1991 Oscar-winning movie “The Silence of the Lambs.”