Attorney Defending Jeffrey Epstein’s Girlfriend Represented Former Casper Businessman Cercy
An attorney who represented former Casper businessman Tony Cercy in two sexual assault trials is now defending the former socialite companion of the late financier Jeffrey Epstein in a criminal sex trafficking case.
Before representing Ghislaine Maxwell, who is in custody after her arrest in June, Jeffrey Pagliuca of the Denver firm Haddon Morgan Foreman represented Cercy who allegedly sexually abused a passed-out woman and his former house at Alcova Lake in 2017.
Cercy was tried in Natrona County District Court in February `2018. A jury acquitted him of first- and second-degree sexual assault. Judge Daniel Forgey declared a mistrial on the third-degree sexual assault charge.
In November 2018, prosecutors tried Cercy on the single count of third-degree sexual assault and a jury in Hot Springs District Court found him guilty.
Cercy appealed to the Wyoming Supreme Court, which in December reversed the conviction on the grounds that Forgey improperly instructed the jury about oral sex. Prosecutor Mike Blonigen in February declined to retry Cercy because the court's ruling would make it nearly impossible to get a conviction.
Pagliuca now represents Ghislaine Maxwell, who was indicted in the U.S. District for Southern New York last month on counts of enticing and transporting minors for illegal sexual activity.
Epstein, a financier and convicted sex offender was charged a year ago with procuring a girl for prostitution and died in his jail cell by apparent suicide in August a day after some documents were unsealed.
The indictment of Maxwell says she aided Epstein's abuse of minor girls as young as 14. She would recruit the girls by asking them about their lives; taking them to movies or shopping; taking them to one of Epstein's properties; and normalizing sexual abuse including Maxwell being present when Epstein sexually abused them.
The indictment also says that Maxwell lied when deposed for a civil lawsuit by a then-14-year-old girl she recruited.
Pagliuca and other attorneys for Maxwell have asked a federal judge to keep documents in that case sealed because privacy considerations outweigh the public interest, and how the documents could affect an ongoing investigation into alleged accomplices of Epstein, according to ABC News.
The sealed court filings in the now-settled defamation lawsuit filed in 2016 by Virginia Roberts Giuffre against Maxwell allegedly contain the names of hundreds of people who socialized, traveled or worked with Epstein for more than a decade.
"This series of pleadings concerns [Giuffre's] attempt to compel Ms. Maxwell to answer intrusive questions about her sex life," Pagliuca wrote to keep the documents sealed, according tp ABC News. "The subject matter of these [documents] is extremely personal, confidential, and subject to considerable abuse by the media."
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Epstein, a financier and convicted sex offender was charged a year ago with procuring a girl for prostitution and died in his jail cell by apparent suicide in August