Maxwell juror to be quizzed

New York: A juror in Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex crimes trial is to be grilled by a US judge after court documents showed he had failed to disclose his childhood abuse during jury selection.

The saga has clouded Maxwell’s guilty verdict -- a jury convicted her in December of sex trafficking minors for late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein following a high-profile trial in New York.

Maxwell’s lawyers filed for a retrial in January after juror Scotty David (identified by his first and middle names) told media outlets he had persuaded fellow panelists to convict the 60-year-old by recalling his own experiences as a sex abuse victim.

Judge Alison Nathan rejected that request pending an investigation into whether the man, known as Juror 50, had disclosed his abuse at the questionnaire stage of jury selection. A document unsealed in court Thursday showed that he had marked the "no" box in response to the question "Have you or a friend ever been the victim of sexual harassment, sexual abuse, or sexual assault?"

Nathan said in a short court order that she would question Juror 50 under oath at a hearing on March 8. "To be clear, the potential impropriety is not that someone with a history of sexual abuse may have served on the jury," she wrote.

"Rather, it is the potential failure to respond truthfully to questions during the jury selection process that asked for that material information so that any potential bias could be explored."