TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday signed a bill that clears the way for the launch of grand jury testimony about the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Epstein, a wealthy Palm Seaside resident, was investigated by Palm Seashore authorities in 2006 for allegedly sexually abusing young women at his mansion, primary to a grand jury investigation. By way of a deal permitted by prosecutors in 2007, Epstein sidestepped federal fees and agreed to plead guilty to two condition prostitution expenses, together with procuring a insignificant for intercourse.
The monthly bill (HB 117), sponsored by Rep. Peggy Gossett-Seidman, R-Highland Beach, and Sen. Tina Polsky, D-Boca Raton, expands an exception to a prohibition on the disclosure of testimony or proof been given by grand juries. For the duration of a invoice-signing event at the Palm Seashore Law enforcement Section, DeSantis identified as it improper that “a incredibly abundant and properly-linked” man or woman was equipped to “engineer an consequence that the ordinary citizen would likely by no means have been capable” to do.
“There needs to be a system in some of these unusual situation where men and women can get the fact and where by we can try to go after justice,” DeSantis stated.
Polsky issued a statement that stated she appears to be “ahead to the transparency the laws will offer” to folks in the state.
“The public and the victims are worthy of to know if prosecutors steered the jury absent from indicting Epstein on much more critical expenses,” Polsky mentioned. “We need to have to know if the program labored or unsuccessful in the pursuit of justice of this heinous unique.”
Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on federal sexual intercourse-trafficking offenses involving slight women, and he was discovered lifeless in a New York jail in what was deemed a suicide. The Palm Beach Submit filed a lawsuit in 2019 in an exertion to get hold of a court docket get to unseal the 2006 grand jury data.
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