Try her again or she goes free, judge sez
A closed-courtroom hearing requested by a Manhattan prosecutor in 2014 is jeopardizing the conviction of a woman who killed her autistic son with a syringe-administered prescription drug overdose.
A Manhattan federal judge Friday found Gigi Jordan’s Sixth Amendment right to a public trial was violated when the Manhattan Supreme Court judge who presided at her nine-week trial in 2014 conducted a hearing outside public view about a post Jordan wrote about her case on the internet.
“The trial court’s closure of the courtroom was deliberate, over the multiple, strenuous objections of Jordan’s counsel, and was a closure that the trial court in fact acknowledged after the fact may well have been erroneous,” wrote Manhattan Federal Magistrate Judge Sarah Cave.
A spokesman for Manhattan DA Cy Vance Jr. said his office intends to appeal Cave’s decision to Manhattan federal appeals judges.
“Our office strenuously disagrees with the ruling of the Magistrate Judge, which misapprehends the applicable law. We will promptly appeal this decision and if it becomes necessary we will retry Ms. Jordan for the premeditated killing of Jude Mirra (left), her 8-yearold son,” spokesman Danny Frost said in a statement.
Jordan (right) was sentenced to 18 years in prison in May 2015 after being convicted of first-degree manslaughter for Jude’s killing. The non-verbal boy died inside their luxury hotel room at the Peninsula Hotel between Feb. 3 and Feb. 5, 2010, after Jordan injected him with a fatal cocktail of prescription drugs, police and prosecutors said.
During Jordan’s trial on Oct. 1, 2014, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Charles Solomon cleared the courtroom to hear arguments from prosecutors and defense lawyers about dubious information Jordan, 59, had put on the internet. The closed hearing was sought by Matthew Bogdanos, an assistant Manhattan D.A. who was the lead prosecutor on the case.
Under Cave’s decision, Vance has three months to decide whether to retry the case or let Jordan be freed from from the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County.