Thomas Girardi, the disbarred lawyer convicted of defrauding his personal shoppers, has been hospitalized and can’t attend a listening to scheduled for Thursday the place a federal choose was set to listen to proof that would decide whether or not he’s despatched to jail or an appropriate medical facility.
The disclosure of Girardi’s hospitalization got here in a submitting submitted by his protection attorneys, who requested U.S. District Decide Josephine Staton to delay the listening to for one to 2 weeks.
Girardi was taken by ambulance Wednesday morning from an Orange County nursing dwelling, and he was admitted within the afternoon as a consequence of “liver dysfunction,” in keeping with the submitting from Deputy Federal Public Defenders Samuel Cross and Charles Snyder.
“He’ll possible stay there for a number of days,” the attorneys wrote. The protection group insisted their shopper needed to be bodily current for the listening to, and argued that ruling in any other case would infringe on his rights.
Staton has but to subject a call.
The episode provides one other twist to the Girardi saga — a momentous downfall for a person who was as soon as amongst Los Angeles’ outstanding attorneys and political donors. Throughout Girardi’s trial final summer time, prosecutors stated the Girardi Keese legislation agency had operated as a Ponzi-like scheme that siphoned off as a lot as $100 million in shopper funds to, amongst different issues, underwrite the approach to life and music profession of his spouse, “The Actual Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Erika Girardi. Jurors convicted Girardi of 4 counts of wire fraud.
Prosecutors are looking for a 14-year jail time period for Girardi, and he was initially set to be sentenced in December of final 12 months. However his attorneys argued that as a consequence of dementia and ongoing cognitive decline, their shopper must be saved out of jail and stay in his Orange County nursing dwelling.
To verify Girardi’s current situation, the choose ordered him to endure a medical analysis at a federal jail in Butner, N.C.
Specialists there concluded he didn’t require particular therapy, though their full report has not been launched.
A forensic psychologist and a neuropsychologist who evaluated him “decided that not solely can Mr. Girardi be safely and appropriately imprisoned inside [the federal prison system] … he needn’t even, right now, be positioned in a specialised medical facility,” his protection attorneys wrote in a submitting during which they disputed these findings and stated they needed to subpoena the report’s authors.
Throughout Thursday’s listening to, these specialists have been anticipated to testify to Girardi’s psychological standing and the premise for his or her conclusions — and face cross-examination from Girardi’s authorized group, who’re nonetheless urgent for him to serve his sentence in a medical facility.
Final month, Staton sentenced Christopher Kamon, the previous chief monetary officer at Girardi’s now-shuttered legislation agency, to 10 years in jail for his position within the large-scale fraud.
Each Girardi and Kamon face further federal fees in Chicago over the misappropriation of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in settlements for households of airplane crash victims.
Instances employees author Harriet Ryan contributed to this report.
