Ghislaine Maxwell is appealing her sex trafficking conviction

Ghislaine Maxwell will appeal her sex trafficking conviction on the grounds that her ‘inhumane’ treatment left her physically unable to mount a defence.

DailyMail.com can reveal that the disgraced socialite will claim she was unable to ‘significantly help’ in court due to harsh conditions at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where she was held prior to her trial, the prison left her so deprived of sleepy and exhausted.

The appeal will suggest that this was the reason he did not testify during his trial for recruiting and trafficking underage girls to the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

The appeal, which is expected to run to hundreds of pages, is due to be filed by the end of Tuesday in the New York federal court where Maxwell was found guilty last January after trial.

She is represented by Arthur Aidala, the New York attorney who is also representing Harvey Weinstein in his appeal against his conviction before a Manhattan jury.

Aidala said Maxwell had been an “active” participant in working on her appeal from her cell at FCI Tallahassee in Florida, where she is now serving her 20-year sentence. She was transferred after her convictions.

Maxwell was found guilty of conspiracy to lure and transport minors to travel to engage in unlawful sexual acts, transporting a minor to engage in unlawful sexual acts, sex trafficking conspiracy, and sex trafficking of a minor.

During his sentencing, Judge Alison Nathan, who presided over the trial, called his crimes “horrifying.”

Maxwell, 61, has always maintained her innocence and said in a jailhouse interview that she wishes she had never met Epstein, her ex-boyfriend.

Maxwell’s lawyers repeatedly complained about his conditions in the Brooklyn lockup while he awaited trial.

The appeal will state that she was held in solitary confinement “under inhumane conditions”, including sleep deprivation.

By the time the trial came, she was so exhausted that she “could not meaningfully assist in her own defence, let alone testify,” the appeal will state.

In previous legal filings, Maxwell’s lawyers said that as she awaited trial, she was “withering away into a shell of who she was.”

They claimed that her hair was falling out, that she was losing weight, and that she was forced to scrub the showers as punishment.

He claimed that he never had a “properly heated meal” and that every meal he was given melted in the plastic of the microwave.

Maxwell also complained about being kept awake because a torch was lit in her face every 15 minutes throughout the night, which kept her awake, saying that the water behind the bars was “smelly and unappetizing” and was so “turbid with heavy particles”. brown.

Judge Nathan largely rejected the claims and in court Maxwell appeared alert and engaged, at one point even meeting a reporter while sitting with her lawyers.

Among the other claims in the appeal will be that the trial violated a non-prosecution agreement signed by federal prosecutors in Florida under which Epstein served 13 months in jail in 2008 for having sex with underage girls.

Maxwell will claim that Scotty David, one of the jurors in his case, “concealed” the fact that they had experienced child sexual abuse and then used it to persuade the other jurors of Maxwell’s guilt.

David said he ‘flew past’ the prospective juror’s questionnaire without realizing that he should have disclosed that he had been a victim of sexual abuse.

There will also be claims that he became a ‘proxy’ for Epstein, who was found hanged in his cell while awaiting trial in July 2019. His death was ruled a suicide.

Maxwell was arrested a year later at a $1 million mansion in Bradford, New Hampshire called Tuckedaway, which she bought while with her husband, Scott Borgerson, a former tech mogul.

Reports claim that the former couple, who married in 2016, have divorced, with Maxwell receiving just $1 million of the $22 million he was worth before his trial.

However, a source close to Maxwell denied that the divorce was final, saying there was “no deal” and declining to comment further.

Inside FCI Tallahassee Maxwell, known as inmate 02879-509, works six hours a day in the library to pass the time. He was denied a job at a government-owned call center because prison authorities decided he shouldn’t go to a convicted sex offender.

As DailyMail.com exclusively revealed on Monday, she was placed in solitary confinement for two days for an interview that was broadcast on British television. Prison authorities believed that she had broken the rules by receiving a payment and released her from the Special Housing Unit when they realized that she had not.

Now back in the general population of the low-security prison, she has daily access to the prison’s sports facilities, including the 400-meter running track where she has been seen doing hour-long work.

Maxwell has used her education at Oxford University to win over some of the 755 inmates, who don’t seem to mind that she is stylish.

She dates con artist Linda Morrow, who helped her plastic surgeon husband swindle insurers out of $44 million by pretending that cosmetic procedures like tummy tucks, breast augmentations and “vaginal tightening” were medical necessities.

Another informant is Narcy Novak, a 65-year-old Florida woman who is serving life without parole for hiring hitmen to kill her husband, hotelier Ben Novak Jr., and their elderly mother, Bernice, in an attempt to seize their property. family property.