Supreme Court Turns Away Jeffrey Epstein Victim’s Petition on Dead Predator’s Infamous Non-Prosecution Agreement
February 25, 2022 Comments Off on Supreme Court Turns Away Jeffrey Epstein Victim’s Petition on Dead Predator’s Infamous Non-Prosecution Agreement
The Supreme Court of the United States on Tuesday left in place previous lower court rulings that dismissed a lawsuit from a woman who claims she was sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein when she was a minor.
Courtney Wild has, for nearly a decade, sued various federal defendants over the sweetheart deal the federal government extended to the now-dead pedophile back in 2007. Authorities say Epstein died by suicide in a New York City jail in 2019.
That 2007 plea deal, crafted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, atypically included a non-prosecution agreement for any and all accused co-conspirators and was entered into without any input from the dead financier’s numerous minor victims.
At the same time, the victims were repeatedly told by U.S. government attorneys that prosecutors were obligated to confer with them if, and when, an agreement was reached. The victims trusted those assurances; their faith, of course, was misplaced.
As a result of the bargain, Epstein spent 13 months in prison but was allowed to leave most days, going to and from his office to work. He also was allowed to see and entertain female visitors — including at least one minor who was allowed to visit him 90 times.
The lack of victim participation in the deal that allowed Epstein to plead guilty to relatively minor state charges of procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and solicitation in exchange for a federal case never being filed by Alexander Acosta’s office was cited by Wild as a violation of the Crime Victims Rights Act of 2004 (CVRA)….
In August 2021, Wild appealed to the nine justices of the nation’s highest court.
“The CVRA promises crime victims in federal cases a right to confer with prosecutors,” her petition to the Supreme Court said. “Yet in this case, one of the most infamous child sex traffickers in this country’s history — Jeffrey Epstein, a man with wealth, power, and political influence — was able to negotiate a secret non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors. The resulting tragedy was that the child victims who bravely came forward to report their sexual abuse were, as the en banc (11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals) decision below acknowledged, ‘left in the dark — and, so it seems, affirmatively misled — by government lawyers’ as to why Epstein was not being federally prosecuted for his horrific crimes.”
The Biden administration, in a brief, argued the court should not entertain Wild’s “tragic” lawsuit — in part because it said the federal government had learned some lessons over the past decade.
“The Department engaged closely with victims in both its 2019 prosecution of Epstein in New York and its recent successful prosecution of Ghislaine Maxwell,” a filing by Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued. “And the Department recently embarked on a review of its guidance to prosecutors regarding victim and witness assistance.”
In two curt lines, the nation’s high court allowed a concerned third-party to file arguments in the case while simultaneously denying the case a hearing.
“The motion of Child USA for leave to file a brief as amicus curiae is granted,” the high court wrote in their orders list dated Feb. 22, 2022. “The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.”
In other words, the third-party filing is on the record — but the high court is not hearing the case.
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