By Alex Peebles (Reporter), Ben Burke (Producer/Editor)
Testifying in front of a federal judge, the juror at the center of the controversy surrounding Ghislaine Maxwell’s guilty verdict said his failure to disclose his history as a sex abuse victim “one of the biggest mistakes” he’s ever made. U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan asked Scotty David, previously known as Juror No. 50, dozens of questions Tuesday about how this information did not come up during jury selection.
Two of the questions on the juror questionnaire directly addressed topics where David’s sex abuse history could have come up. One question asked, “Have you or a friend or family member ever been the victim of sexual harassment, sexual abuse, or sexual assault?” David checked “No.” Later, he said he didn’t remember that question being on the questionnaire.
Another question asked if David had ever been the victim of a crime. He said he incorrectly answered that question, partially because the incidents of sex abuse he survived “doesn’t [sic] define me.”
“I do not feel I am a victim of a crime,” David said. “It’s not something I think about. It happened so long ago and it’s not part of who I am.” The incidents happened when David was 9 and 10 years old.
While the Maxwell juror acknowledged his responses as one of the biggest mistakes of his life, he maintained that he did not intentionally “lie in order to get on this jury.” Instead, he said the mistakes happened because he “skimmed way too fast” through the questionnaire.
“I flew through the questions,” David said. He added that he was “super distracted” by nearby conversations and movements of prospective jurors who dropped off their completed questionnaires just a few feet from him.
The point of Tuesday’s questioning was for the judge to determine whether or not Maxwell’s guilty verdict would be thrown out. Her lawyers called for a new trial after David used his experience being sexually abused to convince some jurors that a victim’s imperfect memory of sex abuse doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
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