Gigi Jordan Found Guilty Of Manslaughter In Death Of Autistic Son
NEW
YORK (AP) — A health care millionaire who fatally drugged her
developmentally disabled son was convicted of manslaughter Wednesday in
what her defense portrayed as a mercy killing by a mother trying to
escape a labyrinth of fear and despair.
Gigi
Jordan had been charged with murder after her 8-year-old son's death in
a pill-strewn luxury hotel room in February 2010. Jurors found her
guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter after her lawyers argued she
was overcome by emotion when she killed Jude Mirra and tried to kill
herself.
She
faces up to 25 years in prison. The murder charge could have put her
behind bars for life. Her sentencing hasn't been set, but she's due back
in court in January.
The
jury has "held the defendant accountable for killing her non-verbal,
autistic child. Gigi Jordan showed no mercy to her son, and should
receive none at the time of her sentencing," Manhattan District Attorney
Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said in a statement.
Her
lawyer Earl Ward said, "This was never a case of murder and the jury
after careful and thoughtful deliberation arrived at that very
conclusion."
A
nurse who made an estimated $40 million as a medical entrepreneur,
Jordan left her career to seek care around the country for her nearly
mute, often tormented-seeming son. He was initially diagnosed autistic,
though she has said other medical explanations followed, as varying as
immune-system disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Prosecutors
said Jordan, 53, killed the boy with chilling determination, plunging a
deadly combination of painkillers and other medications down his throat
with a syringe, because she couldn't handle knowing his condition would
never be cured.
"Instead
of focusing on the gift that was Jude Mirra, instead of focusing on the
laughter and the happiness, all she could see was the disability and
the challenges, and she couldn't accept it," Manhattan Assistant
District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos said in a closing argument.
A
friend of Jordan's testified that Jordan had talked about taking her
own life and Jude's about three years before she did, saying she would
"end it" if a new set of treatments didn't help.
Bogdanos
called the killing "deliberate, planned, calculated," noting that as
Jude lay dying or dead, Jordan transferred money out of a trust fund for
him and arranged to extend her hotel stay.
But
Jordan's lawyers said she acted out of a conviction as real to her as
it might seem remote to others: that her life was in danger because one
of her ex-husbands wanted her dead to keep her from airing claims of
financial malfeasance, and that her death would leave Jude defenseless
against another man she says had sexually abused him.
"I couldn't see any way out of the situation," except killing herself and Jude, she testified.
Both men have denied Jordan's claims, and neither has been criminally charged.
Prosecutors
sought to poke holes in her account. They noted that she said Jude, who
spoke only a few words, typed to her such messages as "I want to
aggressively punish God" starting at age 6 1/2 and accused nearly two
dozen different people of abusing him.
She
didn't immediately report the alleged abuse directly to police, instead
telling therapists and later flying to Wyoming to try to meet with a
noted child-exploitation investigator — a 2008 trip that ended with her
being hospitalized there for several days for a psychological
evaluation.
She was released after doctors concluded she wasn't dangerous to herself or anyone else.
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