DOJ-OGR-00002655.jpg

Case 1:20-cr-00330-AJN Document 144 Filed 02/04/21 Page 7 of 25 PRELIMINARY STATEMENT Ghislaine Maxwell respectfully submits this Memorandum in Support of her Motion to Dismiss Counts One Through Four of the Superseding Indictment as Time-Barred (“Motion”). The government’s late-discovered zeal to attempt to prosecute Ms. Maxwell has forced it to reach back more than 25 years and bring charges that have long been time-barred. Counts One through Four charge Ms. Maxwell with offenses allegedly committed between 1994 and 1997. But the applicable statute of limitations, 18 U.S.C. § 3282, expired five years after the alleged conduct. In an attempt to get around its statute of limitations problem, the government has invoked 18 U.S.C. § 3283, as that statute was amended in 2003—many years after the alleged conduct occurred. But the government’s reliance on that provision is improper for two separate and independent reasons, either of which, by itself, mandates dismissal of Counts One through Four. First, the charges are time-barred even under § 3283 unless the Court retroactively applies the 2003 amendment to the statute to cover Ms. Maxwell’s conduct from the 1990s, rather than the version of § 3283 that was in effect at the time of the alleged offenses. But Congress made surpassingly clear that it did not intend the 2003 amendment to apply retroactively. To the contrary, the conference committee considered and rejected an express retroactivity provision in the House version of the bill, and one of the bill’s original Senate co- sponsors acknowledged on the Senate floor that the omission was intentional. Moreover, any such retroactive application would have a presumptively impermissible retroactive effect. Second, even if the 2003 amendment could be applied retroactively, § 3283 does not apply to any of the offenses alleged in the indictment at all. Section 3283 is an exception to the general five-year statute of limitations, and it applies only to an “offense involving” the sexual or physical abuse or kidnapping of a child. The Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear that the DOJ-OGR-00002655