(NewsNation) — Ghislaine Maxwell is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn her sex trafficking conviction, which landed her a 20-year prison sentence.
The British socialite was convicted back in December 2021 for helping Jeffrey Epstein sexually exploit and abuse underage girls.
Maxwell’s attorneys filed a 159-page petition to the nation’s highest court Thursday. In it, they argue that the government’s non-prosecution agreement with Epstein also applies to her.
“Despite the existence of a non-prosecution agreement promising in plain language that the United States would not prosecute any co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein, the United States in fact prosecuted Ghislaine Maxwell as a co-conspirator of Jeffrey Epstein,” Maxwell’s attorneys wrote.
The agreement in question refers to a 2007 plea deal Epstein made with federal prosecutors in Florida. As part of the arrangement, prosecutors agreed not to prosecute any of Epstein’s co-conspirators.
A federal appeals court in New York heard a similar argument from Maxwell’s attorneys last year but upheld her conviction.
The appeals court ruled that the 2007 deal applied only to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Florida and didn’t apply to prosecutors in New York, where Maxwell was tried.
Now, Maxwell’s attorneys want the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in.
“The default rule should be that a promise made on behalf of the United States binds the entire United States unless it says so affirmatively,” defense attorney David Markus wrote.
Markus added: “A defendant should be able to rely on a promise that the United States will not prosecute again, without being subject to a gotcha in some other jurisdiction that chooses to interpret that plain language promise in some other way.”
Maxwell was found guilty of luring young girls to Epstein so he could molest them. She is currently behind bars at a low-security federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida.
Epstein killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.