Where will Ghislaine Maxwell serve her 20-year prison sentence? She has a preference
Where will Ghislaine Maxwell serve time?
Maxwell, a key conspirator in disgraced multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein’s years-long sexual abuse of underage girls, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Tuesday.
It’s not known where her next big house will be, but her lawyer is eyeing a famous low-security prison in Connecticut.
Maxwell’s attorney on Tuesday requested she be sent to Connecticut’s FCI Danbury prison, the same place entertainment mogul Martha Stewart requested when she was facing prison time for financial crimes. The author and food TV star ended up serving her time in West Virginia.
It’s also the federal prison that inspired Netflix’s “Orange is the New Black” series and housed singer Lauryn Hill after she was sentenced for tax evasion.
One note from Ghislaine Maxwell's sentencing. Her lawyers requested that she serve her 20 year sentence in the minimum security federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut. Martha Stewart asked for the same prison, but got a federal prison in West Virginia instead.
— Ben Wieder (@benbwieder) June 28, 2022
Maxwell’s attorney argued that she should be considered for Danbury’s Female Integrated Treatment program to address her past family trauma, according to court transcripts.
The judge in Maxwell’s case recommended Danbury as a place to consider, but the Bureau of Prisons will ultimately decide where she goes.
The prison bureau has the last word, and at times the agency has agreed to requests for specific sites, said David Weinstein, a Miami criminal defense lawyer and a former prosecutor. Typically, the Bureau of Prisons took 30 to 45 days to designate a site before COVID-19, but that tends to run longer now, he said.
Maxwell has been placed on suicide watch several times since her 2020 arrest, including as recent as last week, which restricts her from wearing certain clothes and puts her under constant surveillance. Her lawyer says the frequent suicide watch is a consequence of Epstein’s death while in custody, which was ruled a suicide.
