The day after the judgment against Ghislaine Maxwell, convicted in New York of sex trafficking of minors, the American justice announced Thursday the abandonment of the proceedings against the prison guards who had not monitored the man at the heart of the case , the American financier Jeffrey Epstein, the night of his suicide in August 2019.
In a court order from Manhattan Federal Court, made public Thursday, prosecutor Damian Williams signed "the discontinuance of charges" ("nolle prosequi" to use the legal formula) against Tova Noel and Michael Thomas.
These prison guards were indicted in November 2019 three months after the businessman, caught up with his numerous pedophile cases, hanged himself in his cell.
The autopsy had concluded a suicide, not without controversy.
Embarrassment of the Federal Bureau of Prisons
Noel and Thomas were accused of having spent the night of August 10 sleeping or surfing the Internet to buy furniture. They had falsified prison records to make it appear that they had carried out their watch rounds, scheduled every 30 minutes, and followed the suicide watch protocol in place since Epstein's incarceration a month earlier. The director of the Metropolitan Correctional Center, a prison deemed to be safe, had been transferred and the two officers suspended. Last May, the two guards reached a prosecution agreement with prosecutors, each agreeing to 100 hours of collective service. They are going to be made redundant.
Embarrassed, the Federal Bureau of Prisons argued that the chronic shortage of staff within the penitentiary was forcing staff to work overtime, leading to chronic burnout of supervisory and correctional officers.
On Wednesday evening, the former companion and accomplice of Epstein, the former British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty by the Manhattan federal court of a series of sex crimes, the most serious of which: the trafficking of underage girls between 1994 and 2004, for the benefit of his companion.
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Ghislaine Maxwell, the fall of a lover
Ghislaine Maxwell, 60, also French and American, faces up to 40 years in prison, but a sentencing date has not yet been set.
His lawyers announced that they would appeal and his brother Kevin Maxwell said he was convinced of his sister's innocence, calling the verdict "a great injustice" Thursday to the ABC channel.
The victims of the Maxwell-Epstein couple have for their part expressed their relief.