On the first day of their new term, the justices declined to take up a case that would have drawn renewed attention to the sordid sexual-abuse saga.
Lawyers for Maxwell, a British socialite, argued that she never should have been tried or convicted for her role in luring teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein, a New York financier. She is serving a 20-year prison term, though she was moved from a low security federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas after she was interviewed in July by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
As is their custom, the justices did not explain why they turned away the appeal.
Trump’s Republican administration had urged the high court to stay out of the case.
Maxwell's lawyers contended that a non-prosecution agreement reached in 2007 by federal prosecutors in Miami and Epstein’s lawyers also protected his “potential co-conspirators” from federal charges anywhere in the country.
Maxwell was prosecuted in Manhattan, and the federal appeals court there ruled that the prosecution was proper. A jury found her guilty of sex trafficking a teenage girl, among other charges.
