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I.
The Defense Rejects the Federal Plea Agreement, Returns to the NPA
"State-Only" Resolution, and Begins Opposing the Sexual Offender
Registration Requirement
After having spent days negotiating the federal charges to be included in a plea agreement,
by the afternoon of September 20, 2007, the defense rejected the federal plea option, and the parties
resumed negotiations over the details of an NPA calling for Epstein to plead to only state charges.
Through multiple emails and attempts (some successful) to speak directly with Acosta and other
supervisors, defense attorneys vigorously fought the USAO's insistence that Epstein plead to a
state charge requiring sexual offender registration.
After receiving the federal plea agreement, Lefkowitz spoke with Villafaña. She reported
to Acosta and Lourie that Lefkowitz told her the defense was "back to doing the state-charges-
only agreement" and wanted until the middle of the following week to work out the details, but
that she had told defense counsel that "we need a signed agreement by tomorrow [Friday] or we
are [filing charges] on Tuesday."
Lefkowitz emailed Villafaña about the draft NPA that she had sent to him, pointing out
that it called for a 20-month jail sentence followed by 10 months of community control, rather than
18 months in jail and 12 under community control, and to ask if the USAO had "any flexibility"
on the § 2255 procedure. Villafaña responded:
The 18 and 12 has already been agreed to by our office, so that is
not a problem. On the issue about 18 [U.S.C. §] 2255, we seem to
be miles apart. Your most recent version not only had me binding
the girls to a trust fund administered by the state court, but also
promising that they will give up their [§] 2255 rights.
I reviewed the e-mail that I sent you on Sunday with the comments
on some of your other changes. In the context of a non-prosecution
agreement, the office may be more willing to be specific about not
pursuing charges against others. However, as I stated on Sunday,
the Office cannot and will not bind Immigration.
Also, your timetable will need to move up significantly. As [State
Attorney] Barry [Krischer] said in our meeting last week, his office
can put together a plea agreement, [and an] information, and get you
all before the [state] judge on a change of plea within a day.
Villafaña alerted Krischer that evening that negotiations were "not going very well" and
that defense counsel "changed their minds again, and they only want to plead to state charges, not
concurrent state and federal." She added, "If we cannot reach an agreement, then I need to
[charge] the case on Tuesday [September 25] and I will not budge from that date."
In response to Villafaña's report of her conversation with Lefkowitz about the defense
preference for a "state-charges-only agreement," Lourie alerted her that, "He wants to get out of
[sexual offender] registration which we should not agree to." Lourie emailed Acosta:
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