An expert in “false memories” who has testified for Harvey Weinstein and OJ Simpson is being lined up by Ghislaine Maxwell as a defence witness at her forthcoming child sex-trafficking trial.
Lawyers for the British socialite also want to call on the expertise of a forensic psychiatrist who has previously examined the sanity of American mass murderers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, the cannibal serial killer, and Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.
Professor Elizabeth Loftus, the memory guru, and Dr Park Dietz, the psychiatrist, are on a list of eight potential expert witnesses that Maxwell hopes will help prove her innocence, according to US court filings.
The disclosures emerged this weekend as she prepares to go on trial in New York at the end of the month, in one of the world’s most eagerly anticipated criminal cases.
Maxwell, 59, is accused of grooming and trafficking girls as young as 14 as part of an international conspiracy involving her former boyfriend, Jeffrey Epstein, the late American billionaire paedophile.
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If she is convicted on all counts, Maxwell, who has pleaded not guilty, faces up to 80 years in prison.
Loftus, 77, a cognitive psychologist, has appeared as an expert defence witness at more than 300 trials, including many high-profile sex abuse cases.
She is a leading authority in a theory known as the “misinformation effect”, which examines how a person’s memory can be altered by incorrect information they may have been given after an event, or by leading questions. She has also examined the issue of false memories.
Loftus could be asked to challenge the evidence of at least four alleged victims of Maxwell who plan to testify in person in court during the six-week trial.
She was called by Weinstein’s lawyers last year to cast doubt on the memory of Annabella Sciorra, an actress who had accused the former Hollywood film producer of rape in the early 1990s.
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Loftus also gave evidence at the trials of OJ Simpson — the former American footballer who was acquitted in 1995 of murdering his wife, Nicole, and her friend Ron Goldman — and Bill Cosby, the comedian accused of multiple allegations of sexual assault. His conviction was overturned this year after an appeal.
“The world is full of people who support accusers,” Loftus once told the Los Angeles Times. “I think people who are accused deserve some modicum of support as well.” Maxwell’s choice of Dietz, 73, as a potential defence witness is more puzzling.
He has mainly given evidence on behalf of prosecutors, often to prove that a killer was of sound mind when they committed an atrocity.
Dietz, an alumnus of Harvard Medical School, first came to prominence in the legal world when he told jurors that John Hinkley Jr knew what he was doing and that it was wrong when he tried to assassinate President Reagan in 1981.
Dietz was later hired by prosecutors to debunk a claim by Dahmer that he was “guilty but insane” after murdering 17 boys and men in America from 1978 to 1991.
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The psychiatrist separately examined the mindset of Kaczynski, who killed three people and injured 23 others in an American domestic bombing campaign.
Maxwell’s lawyers may be seeking Dietz’s help because he runs a consultancy that specialises in criminal behaviour analysis, including “intimate partner violence”.
US prosecutors are likely to find out this week if Maxwell’s choice of witnesses will be allowed by Alison Nathan, the judge presiding over the case.
It also emerged this weekend that the Briton’s lawyers have requested that she be addressed at the trial as “Ms Maxwell” rather than “the defendant”.
Special security measures are also likely to be put in place to transport her to the courthouse in Manhattan each day from her cell in the Metropolitan Detention Center.
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One of Maxwell’s lawyers claimed last week that she was being treated by prison guards like Hannibal Lecter, the fictional cannibal from The Silence of the Lambs.
