By Shayna Jacobs
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — A wealthy woman accused of murdering her autistic son at the Peninsula Hotel is asking for the same treatment as another famous Manhattan defendant — Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
Lawyers for Gigi Jordan, 50, have asked a judge to consider her release on bail under the exact same house arrest and electronic monitoring conditions as the former head of the International Monetary Fund, who was charged with sexually assaulting a hotel maid on May 14.
Strauss-Kahn, who was among the front-runners for French president prior to his arrest, was released from Rikers jail on a $6 million bail package and ordered to stay inside a $50,000 per month private TriBeCa town house, a few blocks from the main Manhattan criminal courthouse. A cadre of security guards watch his every move, at a cost of $200,000 a month billed to him and his wife.
"Ms. Jordan doesn't want to flee," her lawyers wrote in a memorandum asking Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Charles Solomon to reconsider granting Jordan bail, which he declined to do in the past.
The comments were a dig at Strauss-Kahn, who was captured by authorities on a Paris-bound jet at JFK just moments before takeoff. France has no extradition treaty with the US, meaning that if he had escaped American soil, he could not be compelled to return.
Jordan's lawyers want her released from Rikers Island "under the same conditions and restrictions that apply to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and for such other and further relief as may be just and proper," according to a document filed by her trio of defense attorneys.
Jordan's legal team includes Washington lawyers Alan Dershowitz and Michelle Roberts, and well-known local attorney Ron Kuby.
They have asked for Jordan to be allowed to return to her apartment at Trump Towers.
They said Jordan has no incentive to flee and is eager to go to trial because she "wants a full hearing of everything that happened to [her son] and to her that drove her desperate actions that night, the worst night of her life."
Judge Solomon said he would reserve a decision on the lengthy bail application until prosecutors have a chance to submit a written response.
Jordan was charged with forcing her autistic 8-year-old son Jude Michael Mirra to die of a prescription pill overdose in a suite at the Peninsula Hotel on Feb. 5, 2010. She and the boy were discovered in the room together, and Jordan had consumed prescription pills as well, but not enough to kill her, prosecutors said.
Her lawyers have since admitted she killed her son because she believed he had suffered from sexual abuse on behalf of her ex-husband and the child's biological father — allegations that have never been confirmed.
They suggested Monday that they may argue at trial that she was fearful over a perceived death threat by her ex-husband, and that she decided to end her severely disabled son's life to save him from the sexual abuse she believed he would be subjected to if she died and he returned to her ex's custody.
Jordan is due back in court on July 12.
