An appellate court ruled on Wednesday that a former pharmaceutical executive and New York socialite who confessed to poisoning her 8-year-old son who had autism should be set free from prison after a ruling overturned her manslaughter conviction.
According to People, Gigi Jordan, who was sentenced to serve 18 years for the death of her son Jude, in 2015 claims she did it out of “a mother’s love.”
Jordan poisoned her son with a cocktail of prescription drugs, vodka, and juice in a luxury suite at New York’s Peninsula Hotel in February 2010.
The woman claimed she was living with the fear that her first husband might kill her and that she was saving the child from being turned over to his biological father, her second husband, whom she suspected of child abuse.
“I wanted him to be safe and at peace at any cost,” Jordan told CBS News in New York back in 2014, adding that she attempted to take her own life after killing her son.
During Jordan’s 2014 trial, according to the NY Times, the judge overruled her defense attorney’s objections and cleared the court for a closed-door hearing requested by the prosecutor. The judge then put the records of that hearing under seal. He later reversed himself and put the transcripts of that hearing on the record, leading Jordan’s defense team to argue that his initial action violated her Sixth Amendment right to a “speedy and public trial.”
In September, a federal judge agreed with the defense and ordered that Jordan receive a new trial.
This past Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Manhattan district attorney’s request, stating in a one-page order, “Jordan has already served some 11 years of her sentence, more than 70 percent of her likely provisional sentence; and the State does not argue that Jordan will pose a danger to the public if released.”
According to jail records, Jordan remained in custody at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County on Friday. Still, she will be transferred by Monday for a bail hearing in the Southern District of New York.
