The agreement not to pursue federal sex trafficking charges, negotiated in secret while prosecutors told victims that a case against Epstein was still possible, violated the federal Crime Victims’ Rights Act, ruled Judge Kenneth Marra of U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach, Florida. He gave the government and the two victims who sued 15 days to discuss what remedy should apply in the case.
It seems unlikely that Epstein, who served 13 months in a local jail under extraordinarily lenient conditions and was released in 2009, would be returned to jail.
The ruling is the latest development in the saga for Epstein’s victims, who have sought justice for years. Interest in the case was renewed in the #MeToo era, after some women publicly detailed Epstein’s assaults in a 2018 report published by The Miami Herald. The Justice Department said earlier this month that it has opened an investigation into potential professional misconduct by prosecutors who negotiated Epstein’s plea deal.
Acosta was the U.S. attorney in Miami at the time the agreement was negotiated.
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In his ruling, Marra called it “particularly problematic” that the government concealed the existence of the agreement and misled the victims “to believe that federal prosecution was still a possibility.”
“When the government gives information to victims, it cannot be misleading,” the court said.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Labor Department said the decisions made by Acosta’s prosecutors have been defended by the Justice Department for more than a decade “in litigation across three administrations and several attorneys general.”
“The office’s decisions were approved by departmental leadership and followed departmental protocols,” the statement added.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami declined to comment.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.