British corporate lawyer Jeffrey Epstein, who is accused of acquiring teenage girls in the 1990s, says financier sexual abuse says his client’s sleep is interrupted every 15 minutes in prison to breathe.
NEW YORK – Ghislaine Maxwell, a British corporate lawyer accused of finding girls in the 1990s for sexual harassment of financier Jeffrey Epstein, said on Tuesday that his client would be woken up in jail every 15 minutes while sleeping to ensure his breathing.
Lawyer Bobbi Sternheim told a Manhattan judge that Maxwell is struggling with stricter conditions than detainees convicted of terrorism or murder. Maxwell has no mental health problems or suicidal thoughts, and no criminal history, he said.
He asked a judge to act on behalf of his client to improve conditions at the Metropolitan Prison in Brooklyn. In his application, Sternheim made no direct reference to the fact that Epstein took his life in August 2019 in another federal shortfall in Manhattan.
U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan instructed defense attorneys and prosecutors to hold a hearing next week over Sternheim’s request that the steward of the Brooklyn facility address the concerns directly.
A spokesman for the prosecutors rejected the comment. A message was sent to spokespersons for the Federal Office of Prison for comment.
Maxwell, 58, pleads not guilty to accusing three girls of abuse for Epstein in the mid-1990s. He was detained without bail while preparing for the July trial.
In their letter, prosecutors said that the 13 hours a day that Maxwell can review trial materials on a laptop computer is more time than any other prisoner assigned.
The reference confused Sternheim, who said Maxwell faces burdens that other inmates are incapable of and has mistreated him. He noted that the prosecutors ’recent evidence amounted to more than a million documents, and Maxwell did not have enough time to study the material.
He said Maxwell was initially quarantined without soap or a toothbrush, and that medical and psychological staff had stopped checking him, did not tell him the results of the COVID-19 tests, or what to do if he became symptomatic. Prosecutors said on Monday that the coronavirus test was negative and will be tested again when its quarantine is closed.
The lawyer said Maxwell is in fact kept in solitary confinement and is searched and monitored in an overly and invasive way 24 hours a day, including the camera observed in his camera and the camera following his movements whenever he leaves his cell.
“And despite uninterrupted intracellular camera surveillance, Ms. Maxwell’s sleep is interrupted every 15 minutes when a flashlight wakes her up to see if she’s breathing.”
