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The 12-member panel has now deliberated for parts of five days — about 32 hours — and plans to resume Wednesday morning.
On Monday evening, Judge Alison Nathan asked the jurors to plan to stay until at least 6 p.m. going forward, an hour later than their usual time of departure.
“We are very simply at a different place regarding the pandemic than we were only one week ago and we now face a high and escalating risk that jurors and/or trial participants may need to quarantine, thus disrupting trial (and) putting at risk our ability to complete this trial,” she said.
But the jurors sent a note saying they were at a good place to stop for the day and they wanted to finish at 5 p.m.
“Our deliberations are moving along and we are making progress,” the note also said, according to Nathan.
The judge told the attorneys outside of the jury’s presence that if no verdict is reached Wednesday, she will tell jurors to clear their schedule to deliberate over the New Year’s holiday weekend.
“Put simply, I conclude that proceeding this way is the best chance to both give the jury as much time as they need and to avoid a mistrial as a result of the Omicron variant,” the judge said.
Jurors must be available to deliberate every day unless they have a substantial hardship because of an unmovable commitment, the judge told the panel before dismissing them for the day.
If convicted on all six counts, Maxwell faces up to 70 years in prison.
On Monday, the jury asked for a definition of “enticement,” which is part of two of the charges, and sent the judge a question about a charge involving travel for one of the accusers.
The prosecution called 24 witnesses over 10 days of testimony. Their case rested primarily on four women with personal stories of her alleged role facilitating Epstein’s abuse.
“A single middle-aged man who invites a teenage girl to visit his ranch, to come to his house, to fly to New York, is creepy,” prosecutor Alison Moe said in closing arguments. “But when that man is accompanied by a posh, smiling, respectable, age-appropriate woman, that’s when everything starts to seem legitimate.
“And when that woman encourages those girls to massage that man, when she acts like it’s totally normal for the man to touch those girls, it lures them into a trap. It allows the man to silence the alarm bells.”
In closing arguments, attorney Laura Menninger sought to distance Maxwell from Epstein and suggested he had manipulated her as well. She said the prosecution’s case is based on speculation and distracting photos of Maxwell with Epstein, including several that show her giving him a foot massage.
“She’s being tried here for being with Jeffrey Epstein, and maybe that was the biggest mistake of her life — but it was not a crime,” Menninger told the jury.
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