By Matthew Russell Lee, Author on Patreon Song Ruling
BBC - Decrypt - LightRead - Radio - Podcast
SDNY COURTHOUSE, Dec 23 -- This would not be the day.
Without jurors, there could be no verdict on Ghislaine Maxwell. Not today December 23, nor for the three days to follow. By contrast in Minnesota the jury on former police officer Kim Potter, for killing Daunte Wright, still met.
Kurt went to the courthouse, for the free PACER -- soon, he hoped, to be free for everyone, just as a call-in line was or would have been -- and to monitor the Potter jury since that of Maxwell was scattered.
Still on Foley Square there were two TV trucks. Kurt wondered, and streamed: were they there in case something unexpected happened in the Maxwell case? Or had he become so embedded in MaximumMaxwell he thought everything revolved around it?
Before going into the courthouse for the day, Kurt walked east past the office of Michael Randall Long, his go-to criminal defender. The light in his office over the Ali Baba fruit stand was on, maybe the Magistrates Court was open, Kurt thought, in order to give those arrested today one last chance to not like Ghislaine spend Christmas in jail.
He weaved through the traffic of Chatham Square, past the side street where a Chinese homeless man had been bludgeoned to death last Christmas, and to the library.
During the first height of the pandemic, Kurt had used to bike to the courthouse since there were so few subways and he remembered the old folks standing with big laptops in front of the public library on East Broadway, using the wi-fi they had thoughtfully (or -lessly) left on. Now it was open, even on December 23, albeit with plexiglass dividers and what they called no-touch check out.
Kurt had ordered from other branches, what else, Jeffrey Epstein books. There might be something he was missed. He picked out three from the reserve shelf with the last four digits of his library card listed on their spines.
"Don't you want the other one?" the library asked.
He did. There was one more, perhaps the most or only useful one. He checked all four out, bought a one dollar set of headphones they sold to muffle the loud Chinese films and non Chinese porn played by the old folks down in the basement using the wi-fi as he'd used to when he first got to the court, and they took his laptop from him.
On the way back west to the courthouse he cut in on Mulberry Street and set for a moment in a pew of Transfiguration Church. It had a plaque out front for a Portuguese swashbuckler priest but was now, at least for this service, filled with Chinese people.
Kurt lit a candle -- "for the survivors," he whispered for no one at that time -- then continued down the steep hill of Mosco Street to Tasty Dumpling. He'd take in with him a three dollar hot and sour soup. It could be a long day.
"Have you seen your friend Mister Long?" the women behind the counter asked Kurt. "Someone came in looking for him." Kurt shook his head. That would be another story, perhaps the next one. First came #MaximumMaxwell.
The Court Security Office, when Kurt offered to sign in, said to not bother, many people had come in. Even on holidays, judges like Richard J. Sullivan came in to work on their dockets, add spice to their law clerk drafted orders.
The law was a 24-hour business, especially the criminal law. Kurt longed to do more work with Michael Randall Long, at LongLaw as he called it. Those cases got no coverage but maybe he could change there.
The Kim Potter trial and now jury deliberation, by contrast, was nationwide news, almost as big as Chauvin for killing George Floyd. The case seemed difference, with Potter mistaking her service revolver for her taser and killing Daunte Wright.
It was not like kneeling on George Floyd's neck for a full nine minutes.
But when the jury came back, and Kurt started his live thread because there was a live stream, the found Potter guilty on both counts, including manslaughter in the first degree.
Online and in the street outside that courthouse in Minnesota, some people whooped in relief, that justice had been done. Others said it was unfair and the Potter should appeal, starting with the judge's decision even before the government asked and the defense spoke to remand Potter to jail.
There was justice, then there was the appearance of justice. In US v. Maxwell, it seemed to Kurt, there might very well be neither. There was at least three days to go. #MaximumMaxwell.
Note: On October 29, 2021 and again on November 12 Ghislaine Maxwell and the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York filed a flurry of motions in limine, heavily redacted; the Government argued that trial exhibits are not public and will be withheld. Inner City Press opposed and opposes the continued secrecy.
Inner City Press will cover the trial, and all the comes before and after it; #CourtCaseCast and song I, Song 2, Song 3, fifth song and now Nov 27 song
The underlying case is US v. Maxwell, 20-cr-330 (Nathan).
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