Mega Edition: How Ghislaine Maxwell Planned On Dealing With Government Experts At Her Trial (9/15/26)

Ghislaine Maxwell’s defense planned to deal with the prosecution’s expert witnesses by attacking both their admissibility and the assumptions behind their opinions, while bringing in its own experts to give jurors competing explanations. The government’s most important expert was psychologist Dr. Lisa Rocchio, who was prepared to explain grooming, delayed disclosure, secrecy, trauma and the way another adult could help facilitate the sexual abuse of minors. Maxwell’s lawyers first tried to keep Rocchio’s testimony out under the federal rules governing expert evidence, arguing that concepts such as grooming risked turning ordinary behavior into proof of criminal intent and could effectively tell jurors how to interpret the accusers’ testimony. When Judge Alison Nathan allowed much of Rocchio’s testimony, the defense planned to counter her with forensic psychiatrist Dr. Park Dietz, who argued that “grooming” lacked a settled scientific definition and could be applied retrospectively in a way that transformed innocent conduct into evidence of predatory intent. Nathan allowed Dietz to criticize those limitations but barred him from simply telling the jury that there was insufficient evidence Maxwell herself intended to groom anyone.

The defense also intended to use renowned memory expert Dr. Elizabeth Loftus to challenge the reliability of decades-old recollections, including how memory can be altered by suggestion, repeated interviews and the passage of time. More broadly, Maxwell noticed eight experts for trial, covering subjects ranging from memory and psychology to other specialized areas, while simultaneously moving to prevent law-enforcement witnesses from slipping expert opinions into the case under the label of ordinary factual testimony. Her strategy was therefore twofold: keep as much prosecution expert testimony away from the jury as possible, and where exclusion failed, surround it with competing experts who could undermine the government’s interpretation of grooming, trauma and memory. It fit neatly with Maxwell’s larger defense theory that prosecutors were asking jurors to reinterpret decades-old interactions through the lens of Epstein’s later-established crimes, while the defense wanted jurors to see ambiguity, memory problems and innocent explanations where the government saw grooming and facilitation.


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