Wow - Jeffrey Epstein dead

So now there can be no trial to implicate other accused people - say, like Donald Trump.  Alan Dershowitz.  Prince Andrew.  Alexander Acosta.  A second escape from justice for them all.

Sorry, I don't have sympathy for Epstein.

Jeffrey Epstein, the financier indicted on sex trafficking charges last month, committed suicide at a Manhattan jail, officials said on Saturday.

Mr. Epstein hanged himself and his body was found this morning at Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan at roughly 7:30.

Manhattan federal prosecutors last month charged Mr. Epstein, 66, with sex trafficking of girls as young as 14, and details of his behavior have been emerging for years.

  NYT

This really does seem suspicious.

Last month, a week after being denied bail, Mr. Epstein was found unconscious in his cell at the jail in Manhattan with marks on his neck, and prison officials were investigating the incident as a possible suicide attempt.

It was not immediately clear on Saturday whether the authorities had put in additional safeguards to watch him after the incident last month.

If they didn't, it was certainly an egregious act of neglect.

A cache of previously sealed legal documents, released on Friday by a federal appeals court, provided new, disturbing details about what was going on inside Mr. Epstein’s homes and how his associates recruited young women and girls, including from a Florida high school.

UPDATE:

NBC News and the New York Times both reported that he was not on suicide watch at the time of his death.

  Miami Herald

Raising more questions than it answers. Did they know that the first "attempt" wasn't actually an attempted suicide? Did they bow to some other authority on that decision?

“Why, if he had shown suicidality, was he placed in the [Special Housing Unit?]” asked Eric Balaban, a senior staff counsel with the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union who has litigated against prisons and jails for more than 25 years.

Balaban described the special housing unit as a “punitive, isolated unit” that was “not appropriate for someone who’s shown recent suicide attempts.”

Did they think the earlier apparent attempt was just a ploy to be moved to a better unit? Was the second apparent attempt unintended to go so far?

It was reported that Epstein was placed on suicide watch after the previous incident on July 22. In order to be cleared to be taken off suicide watch at a federal facility, inmates must go through rigorous, structured interviews.

[...]

Typically, inmates at federal facilities who are placed on suicide watch undergo daily visits with a psychiatrist and sometimes a physician’s assistant, they said. The providers would have then had to perform a risk assessment to determine whether Epstein was still at risk before taking him off suicide watch.

[...]

“It’s conceivable that in three weeks’ time he had stabilized or apparently convinced mental health staff that he was no longer suicidal and they felt confident in a clinical sense to remove him,” said Lindsay M. Hayes, the project director of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, an expert on suicide preventions in prisons and jails.

We'll never know. But we do know there are potentially dozens of men in high places who are breathing easy again today.  Where should they address their thank you cards?

UPDATE:



 [...]



UPDATE:



"Should" being the operative word.

UPDATE:  At least one aspect is continuing:

UPDATE:

The Justice Department says two guards assigned to watch Jeffrey Epstein when he killed himself in jail have been placed on administrative leave.

The department says in a statement Tuesday that the warden at the Metropolitan Correctional Center has also been temporarily reassigned to an office post pending the outcome of two investigations. Both the FBI and the Justice Department's inspector general are investigating Epstein's death.

[...]

A Justice Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity says Barr has recused himself from any review of the 2008 plea deal involved in the federal investigation into Epstein.

  Miami Herald

Why?

UPDATE:

Guards at the jail where Jeffrey Epstein was held fell asleep and failed to check on him for about three hours when he is believed to have killed himself, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

Several law enforcement and prison officials familiar with the matter confirmed reports that the two guards falsified records to cover up their mistake, according to the newspaper.

Both guards were placed on administrative leave Tuesday, the same day the Justice Department announced it ordered the Bureau of Prisons to temporarily reassign the warden at the Manhattan federal prison.

  The Hill

Both guards fell asleep for three hours is less suspicious than whatever they came up with before?