U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein appears in a photograph taken for the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services' sex offender registry March 28, 2017 and obtained by Reuters July 10, 2019.

The long-shot effort by Jeffrey Epstein, an accused sex trafficker, to win release from jail on bail by promising to personally pay for security to monitor him got even tougher Thursday with a new federal appeals court decision, which blasted such cushy arrangements in most cases.

The ruling in the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals "expressly" bars a "two-tier bail system" in which "wealthy defendants are released to self-funded private jails" while "defendants of lesser means are detained pending trial."

"Such a two‐tiered system would 'foster inequity and unequal treatment in favor of a very small cohort of criminal defendants who are extremely wealthy,' " the ruling by a three-judge appeals panel said.

The decision upholding a bail denial came in a criminal case in Brooklyn, New York, federal court that is unrelated to the case of Epstein, a former friend of Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton.

But the ruling came a week after Epstein filed his own appeal to the 2nd Circuit after a Manhattan federal judge denied his request to be released on bail of upward of $100 million. Epstein's lawyers had told that judge he would be willing to pay for security guards to make sure he complied with a release into home confinement.

Epstein is currently being held in a federal jail in lower Manhattan, where he was found mysteriously injured last week and later placed on suicide watch.

The appeals panel in the other case said that "if a similarly situated defendant of lesser means would be detained, a wealthy defendant cannot avoid detention by relying on his personal funds to pay for private detention."

But the panel said there are some circumstances in which the Bail Reform Act allows a judge to release a defendant pending trial with a condition that includes the defendant paying for private armed security guards to monitor him.

Such a condition "may be appropriate where the defendant is deemed to be a flight risk primarily because of his wealth," the panel noted.

"In other words, a defendant may be released on such a condition only where, but for his wealth, he would not have been detained."

Epstein's lawyer Martin Weinberg had no imediate comment on the ruling.

Epstein's lawyers had suggested to the judge that Epstein could be released into effective house arrest at his massive Manhattan townhouse, where he and visitors could be closely monitored round the clock by private security guards that he paid for, along with an electronic tracking device.

The 66-year-old was arrested in early July after being indicted on charges of sex trafficking of underage girls, and conspiracy to commit such trafficking.

He has pleaded not guilty in the case, where prosecutors say he sexually abused dozens of teenage girls at his townhouse and mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, from 2002 through 2005.

In denying Epstein's bail request two weeks ago, Manhattan federal Judge Richard Berman had said Epstein represented a potential danger to "new victims" from his apparently "uncontrollable" sexual fixation on young girls.