Judge Reprimands Defense Attorney In Gigi Jordan Murder Trial
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A courtroom battle erupted Thursday as the medical examiner testified at the trial of a socialite accused of killing her son in a Manhattan hotel suite.
As WCBS 880's Irene Cornell reported, defense attorney Allan Brenner pressed Dr. Martha Smitty for the results of a sex assault kit she ordered during her autopsy on 8-year-old Jude Mirra.
The boy's mother, Gigi Jordan, claims she killed him to save him from further sexual abuse by his biological father.
But when the medical examiner was forced to admit that the lab report on the kit was not part of her file, prosecutor Matt Bogdanos leaped out of his chair and shouted, "That lab report could not be part of the autopsy, and the defense knows it" because the medical examiner did not do that testing.
The judge scolded the defense attorney for trying to create a false impression that something was being hidden from the jury.
Jordan, a former pharmaceutical executive, is accused of killing her son, who died of a drug overdose in 2010 at the Peninsula Hotel in Midtown.
Prosecutors say Jordan brought 5,918 pills to the hotel with her. She then used a pill crusher, orange juice and possibly vodka to make a poisonous cocktail that she forced into her son's mouth using a syringe, according to prosecutors.
On Wednesday, Dr. Edward Barbieri, a forensic pharmacologist, told jurors he found extremely high levels of Xanax in the child's blood -- 19 times what an adult would take. Barbieri said Jude also was fed a lot of Prozac and another seditive that reduces blood pressure, which was given to him at a deadly level of 20 to 40 times that of an adult dosage.
Jude's father denies the sex abuse allegations against him and has never been charged.
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