(NewsNation) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law Thursday that would make more documents from the 2006 grand jury investigation into disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein public.
“Justice delayed is justice denied,” DeSantis said at a news conference. “I think in many respects this whole ordeal has proven that to be true.”
HB-117, which would become effective July 1, creates a narrowly tailored exception for a judge to order the release of the grand jury records from a 2006 criminal investigation into Epstein.
Grand jury transcripts can be released, according to the new law, if the subject of the grand jury inquiry is dead, the investigation was about sexual activity with a minor, the testimony was previously disclosed by a court order and a state attorney is notified.
Under the law, a judge could release the transcripts sooner than July as part of a lawsuit filed by the Palm Beach Post. In 2019, the newspaper sued the Palm Beach County state attorney and court clerk for a court order to unseal the grand jury proceedings and reveal why it returned only minimal charges.
Asked when the documents could be made available, DeSantis said he doesn’t think it should take “forever and a day.”
“I think the legal hurdles will be cleared,” DeSantis said.
When police raided Epstein’s home in 2006, they found hidden cameras, reportedly used to document the abuse, as well as several photos of young girls, NewsNation local affiliate WFLA wrote.
Epstein ultimately negotiated a deal with South Florida prosecutors in 2008 that allowed him to escape more severe federal charges. Instead, he pleaded guilty to state charges of procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and solicitation of prostitution and was sentenced to 18 months in the Palm Beach County jail system followed by 12 months of house arrest.
Florida’s treatment of Epstein and the relatively lenient punishment he received in the initial case came under scrutiny in 2018 following a series of Miami Herald articles.
Authorities say Epstein killed himself in a New York City federal jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges filed a month earlier. Federal prosecutors said Epstein paid minor girls hundreds of dollars for massages at his homes in Florida and New York and molested them.
British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, is serving a 20-year prison sentence after being convicted in 2021 of luring girls to Epstein’s homes.
Two women who said they were victimized by Epstein spoke at the press conference Thursday.
Haley Robson called the legislation long “overdue.”
“I can’t express enough how we’ve all been so affected by this,” Robson said. “I know for the regular average citizen, it’s just time that goes by. A lot of people tend to forget, but this is not something we should be forgetting about. This is not something to be sweeping under the rug. A lot of us are still in therapy, we’re still trying to survive.”
One thing Robson said she can’t figure out is why Epstein was given “grace and mercy for his inhumane crimes” while those victimized by him were “outed in the media and treated so poorly.”
“Victim-shaming and this high-profile case has damaged a lot of us,” Robson said. “It has made us retract statements, it’s made us internalize the trauma and a lot of us are just trying to still find our way through our healing journey.”
Anothwer woman, Jena-Lisa Jones, said that victims have had no closure.
“We have been left in the dark for so long with no answers to what is going on and why things played out the way that they did,” she said. “We are so, so very grateful to get a little bit more answers and pray that more justice comes out of this.”
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FILE – This photo provided by the New York State Sex Offender Registry shows Jeffrey Epstein, March 28, 2017. The final documents released Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024, among thousands of newly unsealed pages pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of teenage girls contained transcripts of key depositions that were already largely public. (New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP, File) -
Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein (Southern District of New York Court) -
FILE – Jeffrey Epstein appears in court, July 30, 2008, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (Uma Sanghvi/The Palm Beach Post via AP, File) -
FILE — Audrey Strauss, acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, points to a photo of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell during a news conference, July 2, 2020, in New York. Social media is abuzz with news that a judge is about to release a list of “clients,” or “associates” or maybe “co-conspirators,” of Jeffrey Epstein, the jet-setting financier who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. While some previously sealed court records are indeed being made public, the great majority of the people whose names appear in those documents are not accused of any wrongdoing. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File) -
Jeffrey Epstein with Ghislaine Maxwell
This story is developing. Refresh for updates.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
