MANHATTAN — A state appeals court ruled unanimously on Thursday to deny bail for the millionaire mom accused of killing her 8-year-old autistic son.
Gigi Jordan, who is charged with giving her son Jude Mirra a fatal pill overdose at the Peninsula Hotel — before taking a handful of pills herself — has been held without bail since her arrest in February 2010.
As the judges of the Appellate Division, First Department recounted in their decision, Jordan left a suicide note saying her son's death was the only way to protect him from his abusive father and that she didn't want to live without her boy.
Citing the severity of her crime and her high risk for flight, three different judges have denied the former pharmaceutical executive's request to be released on a $5 million bond — and the panel of appeals judges agreed with their decisions.
Jordan's lawyers, Ronald Kuby and Alan Dershowitz, have argued that Jordan should be let out on a package similar to the one Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former International Monetary Fund chief arrested on rape charges last year, was granted.
The bail package would have included wearing an ankle bracelet, as well as an armed security detail guarding her Upper West Side brownstone — all of which Jordan, worth an estimated $40 million, would pay for herself.
But the appeals court ruled that this case "involves the murder of a child, a more serious charge than the charge against Strauss-Kahn, and a greater possibility of conviction, given that petitioner's defense of 'altruistic filicide' has not been successfully advanced in any court in this country, which together provide a greater incentive to flee."
Last week, the same panel of judges reduced alleged 'Millionaire Madam' Anna Gristina's bail from $2 million to $250,000 after repeated denials from the trial court. Gristina's one count of promoting prostitution, however, is a much lower-level crime.
