Woman Who Killed Son Is Guilty of Manslaughter

New York: It was, to say the least, an unusual murder defense.

Gigi Jordan admitted she poisoned her autistic son, giving the 8-year-old a lethal dose of medications. But she said she did so only because she feared she would be murdered by her first husband, and her son would end up in the custody of his father, a man she suspected of committing child abuse.

Jordan's claims formed the basis of her "extreme emotional disturbance" defense, a novel twist on a strategy that experts say is normally used for murders committed in a jealous rage when infidelity is discovered, or during heated moments after someone sees a family member killed.

On Wednesday, during its fifth day of deliberations, a Manhattan jury accepted Jordan's claims and found her guilty of manslaughter, rejecting the prosecution's call for a murder conviction.

Jordan, 53, sighed deeply but showed little other emotion as the verdict was read Wednesday morning. Despite the outcome, her lawyers said she still intended to appeal the verdict. Jordan faces five to 25 years in prison when sentenced; had she been convicted of murder, she would have faced a sentence of 25 years to life.

To prove Jordan acted during an extreme emotional disturbance, defense lawyers had to show not only that her state of mind was violently transformed, but also that her emotions were reasonable and based on objective evidence.

One juror, who asked not to be identified because the judge had asked the jury not to talk about the deliberations, said the jurors did not necessarily accept Jordan's claims as fact, but that they came to agree that she believed they were true. The juror said the panel agreed Jordan's beliefs about her ex-husbands, even if incorrect or irrational, met the legal definition of extreme emotional disturbance. "Any belief, however incorrect, fit the description," the juror said. "It was clear that she believed these stories."

During four days of emotional testimony, Jordan, a wealthy medical entrepreneur, admitted she gave her son, Jude Mirra, a fatal dose of drugs at the Peninsula Hotel in February 2010. She said she asked him to wash the pills down with juice.

The killing, she said, was an act of mercy toward her son, who was autistic and did not speak. She testified that one ex-husband had threatened to kill her, and her other ex-husband - whom she suspected of sadistically abusing the boy - would then gain custody.

"I didn't see any way out of this situation," she testified. "I made a decision that I was going to end my life and Jude's life."

Neither of her former husbands testified at the trial, but both have strongly denied the allegations.

Jordan, a former nurse from Manhattan who became an entrepreneur and made more than $50 million with home health care companies, testified she received death threats from her first ex-husband in the days preceding her son's death, after she confronted him about money transfers out of their accounts.

Two years earlier, she testified, Jude had informed her that his father - her second husband - had repeatedly sodomized and tortured him. She said her son first described the abuse with a few partial words and gestures, but then, in a breakthrough three months later, learned to type on a laptop and gave a detailed account, naming several other people as well.

Jordan's lawyer, Allan L. Brenner, contended the threats from her first husband, coupled with her fear that her son would again be abused, caused an emotional maelstrom. She saw a murder-suicide as the only path out of their predicament, he said. "She did it because she loved Jude," Brenner told jurors in his summation last week.

But prosecutors presented evidence suggesting the killing of Jude was not a spur-of-the-moment act. She testified she had thought about the crime for days before she carried it out. She had not seen either of her former husbands for months, and both men had relinquished their parental rights to Jude.

She also betrayed no outward signs of emotional turmoil. Hotel employees testified that Jordan coolly gave instructions to mail donations to two charities, and she paid a manager $1,000 cash for an extra night at the hotel even after she had poisoned her son. And while he lay dying, she made arrangements via email with a financial manager to cover outstanding bills, the evidence showed.

The police found Jude in a bed at the Peninsula around noon on Feb. 5, 2010. The door had been barricaded with a chair. Jordan was on the floor next to the bed, surrounded by pills. A pill crusher and a syringe used to force-feed patients were discovered, along with empty vodka bottles.

"This was a deliberate, intentional, calculated act," Matthew Bogdanos, the prosecutor, said in summations.

In her appeal, Jordan plans to challenge several rulings by Justice Charles H. Solomon of state Supreme Court. She said those rulings prevented her from presenting all the evidence supporting her contention that she killed her son to prevent him from suffering sexual abuse. That evidence includes a rambling suicide note she wrote as her son lay dying, and testimony from an expert witness that her son's symptoms of autism might have been caused by sexual abuse.

Jordan also plans to challenge Solomon's ruling that she could not argue she acted in self-defense or under duress, which are permissible defenses under state law.

Michael Cahill, a professor at Brooklyn Law School who specializes in criminal law, said Jordan's case is uncommon because the victim had nothing to do with causing the acts that provoked Jordan's despair.

"The idea of killing someone to spare them from other forms of pain is not a scenario you see often," he said. "What drives the manslaughter mitigation defense is the sense that the victim provoked their own killing."