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.”