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Case 1:20-cr-00330-AJN Document120 Filed 01/25/21 Page 10 of 19
Prejudice sufficient to justify severance under Rule 14 may exist when: (1) the defendant
might become embarrassed or confounded in presenting separate defenses, (2) the jury might use
evidence of one of the crimes charged to infer a criminal disposition to commit the other crime
or crimes charged, or (3) the jury might cumulate evidence of the various crimes charged to find
guilt on a count, which if considered separately, it would not so find. Halper, 590 F.2d at 440
(citing Drew v. United States, 331 F.2d 85, 88 (D.C. Cir. 1964)); United States v. Chevalier, 776
F. Supp. 853, 857 (D. Vt. 1991) (citing United States v. Lewis, 626 F.2d 940, 945 (D.C. Cir.
1980)). The decision to sever is “committed to the sound discretion of the district court” and is
“virtually unreviewable” on appeal. Ramos, 2009 WL 1619912, at *1; Burke, 789 F. Supp. 2d at
398.
ANALYSIS
A. The Perjury Counts Are Improperly Joined Under Rule 8(a) and Must Be
Severed
The Perjury Counts (Counts Five and Six) were improperly joined and should be severed
from the Mann Act Counts (Counts One through Four) as a matter of law. The Perjury Counts
and the Mann Act Counts are entirely separate offenses that involve different time periods,
different alleged victims, and different substantive charges. The Mann Act Counts are confined,
purposefully, to a very narrow time period and allege that Ms. Maxwell enticed and transported
minors to engage in illegal sexual activity from 1994 to 1997. Indictment J 9, 13, 15, 19. The
Perjury Counts allege that Ms. Maxwell purportedly made false statements in 2016 in a civil
defamation action that concerned allegations of purported sexual abuse in a later time period
(1999-2002) for which Ms. Maxwell has never been charged criminally. /d. {fj 21, 23; Ex. A at
3-5. The plaintiff in the defamation action, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, is not one of the three
accusers referred to in the Mann Act Counts. Similarly, the people we believe to be the three
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| Filename | DOJ-OGR-00002288.jpg |
| File Size | 708.3 KB |
| OCR Confidence | 94.8% |
| Has Readable Text | Yes |
| Text Length | 2,060 characters |
| Indexed | 2026-02-03 16:22:07.071607 |