Jay Howell

Jay C. Howell is a Jacksonville lawyer who represents accident and crime victims. A former state prosecutor of sexual crimes and child abuse, he was chief counsel to a U.S. Senate subcommittee from 1981 under Senator Paula Hawkins, drafting federal legislation on missing children, child pornography and serial murder, and from 1984 to 1987 was the founding executive director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. In 2008 he joined Paul Cassell and Bradley Edwards as counsel for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein in Doe v. United States, the suit under the Crime Victims' Rights Act over the Epstein non-prosecution agreement, and in 2018 he appeared for three victims in Epstein's suit against Edwards and Scott Rothstein.¹²³

Prosecutor and Senate Counsel

Howell served four years as an Assistant State Attorney in Jacksonville, specializing in cases of sexual crimes and child abuse, and was lead attorney in more than 50 jury trials. In 1981 Hawkins appointed him chief counsel to the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, where he "conducted Senate investigations and drafted federal legislation addressing the issues of missing children, child kidnaping, child pornography, and the investigation and apprehension of serial murderers."¹

National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

From 1984 to 1987 Howell "founded and served as the first Executive Director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children," writing publications on child safety and advocating state legislation. Since 1987 he has practiced in Jacksonville, representing people hurt in automobile accidents and victims of drunk drivers, and "children and adults who are victims of assaults, sexual crimes, child abuse and other criminal activity." He gives annual training seminars for the Florida Attorney General on the rights of victims of child abuse and other crimes.¹

In 1990 the Governor of Florida appointed him to represent crime victims on the Florida State Crime Commission. He has chaired the Florida Bar Crime Victims Subcommittee on the Rights of Women and Children and has drafted state and federal laws on sexual predators, the privacy of sexual crime victims, the protection of child witnesses, the right of victims to speak at sentencing and the right of victims to enforce their rights. He served on the American Bar Association's Task Force on Child Witnesses and the Board of Advisors of the National Center for the Prosecution of Child Abuse. In 1997 he received the National Crime Victims Service Award at the White House from the President and the Attorney General.¹

Doe v. United States

Edwards filed the emergency petition of the victim then known as Jane Doe 1, later identified as Courtney Wild, on July 7, 2008, a week after Epstein's state guilty plea, before Judge Kenneth Marra in West Palm Beach; the government's response was the first reference the petitioners saw to the non-prosecution agreement. Cassell, who had resigned as a federal judge in Utah the previous November, moved for a limited appearance for the petitioners on July 28, 2008, and Howell did the same on August 8. On August 21, 2008 Marra compelled production of the agreement under a protective order. On February 21, 2019 he found that "[p]articularly problematic was the Government's decision to conceal the existence of the NPA and mislead the victims to believe that federal prosecution was still a possibility," and on September 16, 2019, after Epstein's death, he denied every remedy the petitioners sought. On April 15, 2021 the en banc Eleventh Circuit held seven to four that the Act gave Wild no freestanding pre-charge action, and on February 22, 2022 the Supreme Court denied certiorari.²⁴

Epstein v. Rothstein

In 2009 Epstein sued Rothstein, whose firm Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler had run a 1.2 billion dollar Ponzi scheme, and Edwards, who had briefly worked there, in Palm Beach County, alleging that Edwards had fabricated claims and helped Rothstein market bogus settlement rights involving the claims against Epstein. Edwards was not implicated in Rothstein's fraud.³⁵ Epstein dropped his claims against Edwards in 2012 and Edwards counterclaimed for malicious prosecution. On March 7, 2018 Howell, of Jay Howell & Associates, filed an emergency notice of appearance as "attorney for the victims" and a Jane Doe in the case, then styled Jeffrey Epstein, Plaintiff/Counter-Defendant, v. Scott Rothstein and Bradley J. Edwards. With Cassell he represented three of Epstein's victims as limited intervenors. On November 9, 2018 Epstein, through counsel including Jack Goldberger, moved for in camera inspection of 302 emails withheld on a 1,607-entry, 159-page privilege log, arguing that only 19 entries were communications with a client, that "the majority of the documents are e-mails among attorneys and staff" and "with media sources," and that Cassell and his co-counsel had "very significant personal and professional reas[ons]" for keeping them from "the light of the courtroom." Epstein settled Edwards's counterclaim in December 2018 with a written apology.⁵⁶⁷