With a little more than a week before jury selection is scheduled to begin in the Nxivm trial, defendant Allison Mack, the Smallville actress accused of running a sex-slavery ring for Nxivm leader Keith Raniere, submitted a letter to Judge Nicholas Garaufis asking for a 30-day delay so she could work out a guilty plea.
Two other defendants, Nancy Salzman and her daughter Lauren Salzman, have already pled guilty, and two more defendants, bookkeeper Kathy Russell and Seagram heiress Clare Bronfman, are also reportedly working on plea deals.
But Raniere’s attorneys, Marc Agnifilo and Teny Geragos, submitted their own letter to Judge Garaufis, encouraging him to hold the line on the trial’s scheduling, even if prosecutors said they were prepared to wait.
Knowing that Your Honor has 500 jurors coming in for jury selection on April 8, 2019 and April 9, 2019, the government remarkably consents to a 30-day adjournment of the trial to conduct plea negotiations. As Your Honor reconfirmed as recently as 30 minutes ago, this trial is going forward with jury selection on April 8, 2019. We thank the Court for setting the firm trial date that has existed for months now, and we look forward to abiding by the Court’s trial date.
The judge rejected Mack’s request.
In a previous filing Raniere’s attorneys warned that if the judge ends up delaying the trial (which has happened numerous times already), they won’t have free time on their schedules until March 2020.
We’d like to hear from our legal experts: What would Mack need 30 days to work out, if Nancy and Lauren Salzman found a way to get their pleas in already?
Here are the documents…
Nxivm Doc 481: Mack request… by on Scribd
Nxivm Doc 483: Agnifilos/Geragos Reply by Tony Ortega on Scribd
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Posted by Tony Ortega on March 29, 2019 at 18:00
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Tony Ortega is a journalist who was formerly the editor of The Village Voice. He’s written about Scientology since 1995, and in May 2015 released a book about Scientology’s harassment of Paulette Cooper titled ‘The Unbreakable Miss Lovely,’ and more recently a compilation of his stories, ‘Battlefield Scientology.’ He continues to monitor breaking developments in the Scientology world, as well as other subjects at The Underground Bunker. You can reach him by sending him a message at tonyo94 AT gmail.com (Drop him a line if you’d like to get an e-mail whenever a new story is posted.)
