If convicted on all six counts, Maxwell faces up to 70 years in prison.
On Monday morning, the jury asked for a definition of “enticement,” which is part of two of the charges. The judge wrote that the word meant to “attract, induce or lure using hope or desire.”
And during its afternoon deliberations the jury sent a question to the judge about one of the charges. After a debate on how to respond, Judge Alison Nathan ultimately referred the jury back to the jury charge instructions, saying to the parties in court she didn’t know the meaning of the question and it was “too difficult to parse factually and legally what they’re asking.”
The jury wrapped for the day at 5 p.m. and is expected to resume its work Tuesday at 9 a.m.
What happened at the trial
The prosecution called 24 witnesses over 10 days of testimony. Their case rested primarily on four women with personal stories of her role facilitating Epstein’s abuse.
“A single middle-aged man who invites a teenage girl to visit his ranch, to come to his house, to fly to New York, is creepy,” prosecutor Alison Moe said in closing arguments. “But when that man is accompanied by a posh, smiling, respectable, age-appropriate woman, that’s when everything starts to seem legitimate.
“And when that woman encourages those girls to massage that man, when she acts like it’s totally normal for the man to touch those girls, it lures them into a trap. It allows the man to silence the alarm bells.”
In closing arguments, attorney Laura Menninger sought to distance Maxwell from Epstein and suggested he had manipulated her as well. She said the prosecution’s case is based on speculation and distracting photos of Maxwell with Epstein, including several that show her giving him a foot massage.
“She’s being tried here for being with Jeffrey Epstein, and maybe that was the biggest mistake of her life — but it was not a crime,” Menninger told the jury.
