U.S. Court of Appeals rejects Keith Raniere's appeals

Albany — A panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit roundly rejected former NXIVM leader Keith Raniere’s request to have three lower court rulings overturned.

The ruling was released Monday morning, less than a week after the panel heard Raniere’s appeal.

Raniere had filed three separate appeals of orders from senior U.S. District Court Judge Nicholas Garaufis: a third request for a new trial, a request to reopen discovery after his conviction, and a request that Garaufis recuse himself from the case.

The appeal for a new trial was based on the claim that Raniere’s attorneys had discovered new evidence withheld during his trial that would undermine his racketeering conviction. Raniere’s attorney claimed that the government manufactured child pornography and planted in on a computer hard drive to frame him.

Federal agents seized a camera card and a hard drive from Raniere’s Halfmoon townhouse in March 2018. In February 2019, prosecutors revealed that they had discovered 13 photos of a woman taken in 2005 when she was 15 years old, including nine classified as child pornography.

The appellate panel ruled that Garaufis had not abused his discretion in denying Raniere’s motion for a new trial because Raniere had not actually discovered any new evidence. Both Garaufis and the appellate panel noted that Raniere’s trial attorney had been able to challenge the child pornography evidence at trial.

The appellate panel also ruled that Raniere’s appeal failed to show how suppressing that evidence would have met the burden for requiring a new trial. It went on to note that his racketeering conviction still would have remained in force because prosecutors only needed to prove two underlying acts to support the racketeering conviction. The jury found the prosecution had proven 11 bad acts.

The ruling also quickly dismissed Raniere’s other appeals, to reopen discovery and remove Garaufis.

The three-judge panel found Raniere’s attorney did not provide a legal basis for his claim to have a right to post-judgment discovery. The judges also pointed out again that Raniere already had access to the evidence at the time of his trial.

Finally, the ruling found that Raniere did not satisfy the benchmark to have Garaufis recuse himself from the case. Instead, they complimented the judge: “Recognizing the challenges confronted by district court judges on a daily basis, the Court commends Judge Garaufis for handling this seven-year litigation with skill, patience and restraint,” they wrote.

Raniere, 65, is serving a 120-year sentence after being convicted in June 2019 of racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, wire-fraud conspiracy, forced labor conspiracy, sex trafficking conspiracy and two counts of sex trafficking. He is currently incarcerated at a federal facility in Tucson, Arizona.