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Case 1:20-cr-00330-AJN Document 126 Filed 01/25/21 Page 4 of 13

PRELIMINARY STATEMENT

When the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily limited the availability of grand juries in the Manhattan courthouse, the government responded with an extraordinary measure. Rather than wait a short time until residents of counties constituting the Manhattan Division of this District could appear for grand jury service, the government, in its apparent determination to mark the anniversary of its indictment of Jeffrey Epstein with a July 2, 2020 announcement of the indictment and arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell, sought and obtained an indictment of Ms. Maxwell through a grand jury drawn from the White Plains Division. In doing so, the government procured Ms. Maxwell’s indictment using a grand jury pool that excluded residents of the community in which Ms. Maxwell allegedly committed the offenses with which she is charged, and in which she will be tried, in favor of a grand jury drawn from a community in which Black and Hispanic residents are significantly underrepresented by comparison. The government thus violated Ms. Maxwell’s Sixth Amendment right to be indicted by a grand jury drawn from a fair-cross section of the community.¹

It was unnecessary for the government to take this step. According to an email from a court official filed in connection with a similar challenge to the government’s practice, a Manhattan grand jury was seated as early as June 25, 2020—four days before Ms. Maxwell was indicted. See Exhibit A to Reply Memorandum in Support of Motion to Dismiss, U.S. v. Balde, No. 1:20-cr-00281-KPF (S.D.N.Y.), Dkt. No. 70-1 (filed Dec. 23, 2020). Had the government waited until that time, it might have been unable to meet its arbitrary July 2 deadline, and its press conference touting the indictment and arrest of Ms. Maxwell might have had slightly less

¹ The fact that Ms. Maxwell herself is neither Black nor Hispanic does not deprive of her of standing to raise this challenge. “[T]he Sixth Amendment entitles every defendant to object to a venire that is not designed to represent a fair cross section of the community, whether or not the systematically excluded groups are groups to which he himself belongs.” Holland v. Illinois, 493 U.S. 474, 477 (1990).

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