Ghislaine Maxwell 'Trusted' To Look After Suicidal Inmates, Her Lawyers Claim
Ghislaine Maxwell has been entrusted to look after suicidal inmates at a Brooklyn jail, her attorneys claimed.
According to a Newsweek report, her lawyers then asked the court that she should therefore be bailed on Jeffrey Epstein's charges.
The socialite has been linked to trafficking underage girls for her former pedophile lover Jeffrey Epstein. She is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
Maxwell has been denying the allegations against her. However, her legal team claimed that the conditions have been too strict, with guards using a flashlight to wake her every 15 minutes, checking whether she is breathing.
Maxwell's lawyers said that she would not be able to mount her defense effectively unless she is released on $28.5 million bail. Her lawyers are also offering to place her under armed guard.
Now that Maxwell has been trusted with the responsibility to watch over suicidal inmates, her attorneys Mark Cohen and Jeffrey Pagliuca have introduced an idea with the Manhattan Federal Court.
They said that if she can be trusted to counsel other suicidal inmates, she should be trusted not to take her own life.
"She has been made a suicide watch inmate, which is the highest and most trusted responsibility that an inmate can have," the lawyers said in a New York Post report.
The lawyers added that it is ironic Maxwell is being surveilled continuously as if she were a suicide risk when she is trusted enough to monitor inmates who are truly at risk of suicide.
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Maxwell's lawyers further added that she is in virtual solitary confinement and is not given the same conditions as other inmates.
Prosecutors argued in the summer that Maxwell was an extreme flight risk, adding that she attempted to evade arrest when the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the secluded New Hampshire mansion. Maxwell was staying in the said mansion in July.
Escape Attempts
Federal agents who arrested Maxwell found a cellphone wrapped in tin foil inside her New Hampshire in a misguided effort to evade detection, according to prosecutors in July.
The disclosure came after court papers rejected Maxwell to be released from jail as she waits for trial on allegations of helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls, as reported by NBC News.
Prosecutors released new details of what took place during Maxwell's arrest and highlighted the risk of allowing her out of detention.
The prosecutors also cited her wealth, saying that she controls a Swiss trust worth $4 million. Maxwell also has an account in England that has held over $2 million.
"To the extent the defendant now refuses to account for her ownership of or access to vast wealth, it is not because it does not exist - it is because she is attempting to hide it," prosecutors noted in a report.
Court papers stated that when FBI agents came to her New Hampshire home on Jul. 2, they breached the gate and ordered her private security guard to open the front door. The court papers added that the agents saw Maxwell trying to flee through a window.
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