{"id":1366960,"date":"2022-03-09T12:40:47","date_gmt":"2022-03-09T17:40:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1366960"},"modified":"2022-03-09T12:40:54","modified_gmt":"2022-03-09T17:40:54","slug":"juror-50-pleads-the-fifth-granted-immunity-in-maxwell-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/juror-50-pleads-the-fifth-granted-immunity-in-maxwell-trial\/","title":{"rendered":"Juror #50 Pleads the Fifth, Granted Immunity in Maxwell Trial"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fjuror-50-pleads-the-fifth-granted-immunity-in-maxwell-trial%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1366960&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>NEW YORK\u2014Juror No. 50, who\u2019s at the center of a possible mistrial in the Ghislaine Maxwell sex-trafficking case, appeared in federal court on March 8 where he pleaded the Fifth Amendment\u2014the constitutional right to refuse to answer questions in order to avoid incriminating himself.<\/p>\n<p>U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan, who presided over the case in December, granted him immunity from prosecution with the exception of perjury.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou need to answer my questions today and you need to answer truthfully,\u201d she instructed the juror, who chose not to disclose his actual name.<\/p>\n<p>Soon after the jury\u2019s Dec. 29 guilty verdict on five of six counts of sex trafficking of a minor, Juror No. 50 stated publicly he was a victim of childhood sexual abuse and had made this known to his fellow jurors during deliberations.<\/p>\n<p>At the center of the issue is the questionnaire potential jurors filled out prior to selection.<\/p>\n<p>Juror No. 50 did not accurately answer questions relating to his childhood, sexual abuse at the hands of a stepbrother and his friend, prompting Maxwell\u2019s defense to push for a new trial.<\/p>\n<p>Nathan read the pertinent questions with his responses, which were written on Nov.4, 2021, the first day he reported for jury duty.<\/p>\n<p>Juror No. 50 selected \u201cno\u201d to the first question that referred to sexual abuse, asking if he, a friend, or a family member had ever been a victim of it.<\/p>\n<h2>\u2018I was Super Distracted\u2019<\/h2>\n<p>\u201cIs \u2018no\u2019 an accurate answer to that question?\u201d Nathan asked him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo, it is not,\u201d he replied and said the accurate answer is \u201cyes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Juror No. 50 repeatedly cited the reasons for his incorrect answers.<\/p>\n<p>One was he was sidetracked while filling out the questionnaire.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt this point, I was super distracted,\u201d he said and described sitting at the table at the spot where others were piling their completed paperwork and asking questions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI felt rushed only because of all the commotion going on in front of me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>A second was with the \u201csheer volume\u201d of potential jurors, he didn\u2019t anticipate being chosen.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI never thought I\u2019d be one of the 12,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<h2>Showed Remorse for Lack of Focus<\/h2>\n<p>The third reason was he didn\u2019t consider himself a victim, so he breezed by the questions pertaining to victimhood.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the questions referring to sexual abuse had boxes to check, that included \u201cself\u201d and \u201cfamily and friends.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Juror No. 50 stated multiple times, that in his haste, he never noticed the \u201cself\u201d boxes.<\/p>\n<p>He showed remorse for his lack of focus calling it \u201cone of the biggest mistakes I ever made in my life.\u201d He said he did not intentionally give an incorrect answer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI skimmed. I didn\u2019t read everything,\u201d he said and described the questionnaire as \u201ca pretty thick packet.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Juror No. 50 also said several times that had he answered the questions accurately, he would still have been a fair and impartial juror and would have still have had the ability to render a fair and just verdict based on the evidence submitted at trial.<\/p>\n<p>It was during a post-trial interview with a reporter when Juror No. 50 learned about the importance of his inaccurate answers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid I just mess something up entirely?\u201d he asked himself.<\/p>\n<p>Juror No. 50 took on lawyers in January with Todd A. Spodek, of Spodek Law Group in Manhattan.<\/p>\n<p>Pleading the Fifth came as no surprise, as Spodek sent a letter to Nathan on March 1, alerting the court to his client\u2019s decision to do so.<\/p>\n<p>Juror No. 50 and Nathan looked directly at each other when speaking and he often replied with \u201cyes, your honor,\u201d and \u201cno, your honor.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Maxwell, who was present in the courtroom, was tried on trafficking minors for the sexual abuse of her employer Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n<p>Nathan gave both sets of attorneys the deadline of March 15 to file briefs regarding what they propose next.<\/p>\n<div class=\"author_wrapper\">\n<div class=\"one_author_block round\">\n<div class=\"top_row\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/author-dave-paone\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Follow<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Dave Paone covers New York City.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEW YORK\u2014Juror No. 50, who\u2019s at the center of a possible mistrial in the Ghislaine Maxwell sex-trafficking case, appeared in federal court on March 8 where he pleaded the Fifth<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1366960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1366960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1366960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1366960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1366960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}