The judge who found Tom Girardi competent to stand trial saw evidence he was faking memory problems in his relationship with his reality star wife and in the shabby cardigan the normally dapper man wore for mental exams.
In a 52-page decision unsealed Friday, U.S. Dist. Judge Josephine Staton wrote that the disgraced former attorney met the legal standard to face wire fraud charges stemming from what prosecutors describe as a decades-long, $100-million scheme that robbed law firm clients.
“Defendant clearly understands the nature of the charges against him,” the judge wrote. She said Girardi’s “purported denial of knowledge of the charges made against him [and/or the purported failure to remember such charges once reminded of them] is wholly lacking in credibility.”
Staton’s competency finding was disclosed last week, but the decision explaining her reasons was held back to allow for redactions of personal information. Much of her ruling is based in the conclusions of experts who testified at series of hearings last fall.
The judge also pointed to Girardi’s claim that he did not remember his wife, the “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Erika Jayne. The pair have been married for more than 20 years, though she filed for divorce in 2020 as his financial problems emerged.
“Defendant’s denial of any memory of a third wife is undercut by the fact that, during a clinical interview, he answered a phone call from her, accurately remembering she was leaving to fly to Spain that day,” the judge wrote, referring to testimony from a neuropsychologist who examined Girardi for the government.
Staton also noted the ill-fitting and hole-ridden burgundy sweater that Girardi, known during his career for immaculately tailored suits, chose to wear to court, interviews with lawyers and medical experts. Prosecutors have suggested it was part of a calculated plan to portray himself as mentally addled. Staton noted how Girardi would dig through a hamper looking for the sweater before key meetings with psychological experts.
“This tended to show that Defendant’s short-term memory was intact because he recalled having that sweater, sought it out to wear on that day, and found it in the laundry,” she wrote.
Girardi’s lawyers have argued that the 84-year-old, who resides in the dementia ward of a nursing home, has no short-term memory and does not recognize them or remember the criminal case against him when they meet.
A magistrate judge entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf last year because of the competency issue. With that decided, normal proceedings in the case are to resume with a hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
Staton allowed that his advanced age might make him less of a help to his lawyers than at the pinnacle of his career, when his “superior cognition and his abilities as a civil trial attorney would have been likely to result in an exceptional ability to participate in his own defense.”
But, she concluded, “any actual diminishment of these abilities or of his cognition is not as severe as Defendant presents it and, stripped of the feigning and/or exaggeration described by the experts and found by the Court herein, Defendant retains the ability ‘to assist properly in his defense.’”
Harriet Ryan
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