Footage from a camera aimed at the area outside Jeffrey Epstein’s jail cell at a the Manhattan Correctional Center is unusable, sources told the Washington Post.
According to the report, the sources said that footage from one of the cameras outside of the cell where Epstein reportedly took his own life on August 10 was in too poor condition to be useful to investigators probing the circumstances of Epstein’s death. It is unclear exactly why the footage is not usable, or if the problem with the camera was isolated to the day that Epstein died.
Footage from nearby cameras did provide clearer footage. As CrimeOnline previously reported, there were no cameras trained directly on Epstein’s cell at the time of his death.
Epstein’s legal team has questioned the New York City medical examiner’s ruling that Epstein died of suicide by hanging, and had previously said they would be seeking video footage of the area around Epstein’s cell.
“The defense team fully intends to conduct its own independent and complete investigation into the circumstances and cause of Mr. Epstein’s death including if necessary legal action to view the pivotal videos — if they exist as they should — of the area proximate to Mr. Epstein’s cell during the time period leading to his death,” the lawyers said in a statement earlier this month.
“We are not satisfied with the conclusions of the medical examiner.”
Epstein was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges when he died. U.S. Attorney General William Barr has ordered an investigation into the “serious irregularities” at the jail that allowed Epstein to be alone and unsupervised in his cell. Epstein had previously been placed on suicide watch after he was found injured and unresponsive in his cell on July 23, but was taken off suicide watch only six days later.
Epstein was subsequently placed in a special housing unit where protocol required that a guard look in on him every 30 minutes, but no guard checked in on him for three hours before he was found unresponsive in his cell in the early morning hours of August 10.
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