Second Circuit upholds Keith Raniere sex cult abuse conviction
Published By admin
MANHATTAN (CN) — A federal appeals court on Monday rejected NXIVM cult leader Keith Raniere’s bid for a new trial, finding that a “mountain of evidence” substantiated the government’s charges of child sexual exploitation and pornography predicate acts and his convictions on all counts.
Seeking to overturn his 2020 criminal conviction on appeal while serving out a sentence of 120 years of prison, Raniere claimed federal investigators had manufactured evidence of child pornography.
He said they planted it on a computer hard drive to link him to additional child pornography and sexual exploitation racketeering predicate acts associated with nude pictures found on Raniere’s hard drive of a 15-year-old cult member named Camila, who was part of a secretive inner circle subgroup within the NXIVM organization known as DOS.
The three-judge panel for Second Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that Raniere had not actually identified any newly discovered evidence that was illegally suppressed by prosecutors, and the trial jury properly convicted him, even disregarding any exculpatory evidence that should have been turned to Raniere’s defense.
“Even setting aside the allegedly newly discovered or suppressed evidence, there is no ‘real concern that an innocent person may have been convicted,’ because ‘the jury was presented with ‘sufficient evidence’ to convict Raniere of ‘sexually abusing Camila in September, 4 2005,” the judges wrote in their summary order.
The Second Circuit panel roundly affirmed a lower court’s dismissal of a motion for a new trial. It found that Raniere’s defense already had access to that digital forensic evidence at the time of trial, and his appellate challenge ignored “ample evidence” supporting his conviction on the relevant predicate acts.
“For starters, Raniere does not explain why the duplicate forensic image of the camera was materially exculpatory; he merely asserts that he ‘would have had it analyzed by a forensic expert,’ which might have led to a potential ‘application for suppression,’” the panel wrote. “But such vague statements do not come close to meeting Raniere’s burden of ‘proving that he is entitled to a new trial’ under either Rule 33 or Brady.”
The panel that heard Raniere’s appeal was comprised of U.S. Circuit Judge Pierre Leval, a Bill Clinton appointee; U.S. Circuit Judge Richard Sullivan, a Donald Trump appointee; and U.S. Circuit Judge Maria Araújo Kahn, a Joe Biden appointee.
Read more https://www.courthousenews.com/second-circuit-upholds-keith-raniere-sex-cult-abuse-conviction/
Content retrieved from: https://www.courthousenews.com/second-circuit-upholds-keith-raniere-sex-cult-abuse-conviction/.
