The now disgraced and disbarred attorney Tom Girardi must surrender to federal authorities early next year for a medical evaluation at a federal prison in North Carolina, a judge ruled Friday.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton amounts to a procedural interlude after the 85-year-old Girardi was convicted of wire fraud in August. Girardi was to be sentenced Friday, with prosecutors seeking 14 years in prison — and one of his former clients had flown in from Indonesia to witness the proceeding.
But his defense attorneys had argued that Girardi’s dementia and ongoing cognitive decline warranted keeping him out of prison and in the memory care ward of his Orange County nursing home.
To resolve the dispute, Staton canceled the sentencing and held a hearing Friday where she ruled that Girardi must turn himself in to U.S. Marshals on Jan. 7 and be flown to the federal prison in Butner, N.C., an advanced medical facility for inmates. Girardi is supposed to remain there for up to 30 days as prison staff observe him and evaluate whether prison, or another suitable medical facility, is the appropriate site to serve out a sentence.
After the evaluation, the judge said she would review the findings of the Bureau of Prisons and hold another hearing before rescheduling a sentencing hearing.
“I was pretty ready to proceed with sentencing,” the judge said. But after attorneys raised in recent days the prospect of Girardi serving time in a medical facility, Staton said she spent her weekend researching the issue. “The legal statute is relatively clear, it’s just the logistics of it” were not, she said.
Still, Girardi’s defense attorneys opposed the 30-day period in federal custody, arguing that it was tantamount to incarceration. Deputy Federal Public Defender Samuel Cross asked the judge to instead have his client observed in his current nursing home, saying he has “special needs.”
“We expect him to deteriorate and not do well there,” Cross said of the Butner complex. He also lamented that North Carolina was “as far as possible” from the Orange County facility where Girardi has resided for years.
Cross also expressed concerns that Girardi’s cross-country transport would be disruptive to his client, with bus or plane stops along the way that lengthened the journey.
Assistant U.S. Atty. Scott Paetty countered that the staff in North Carolina and with the U.S. Marshals were “well-versed” in handling someone with Girardi’s needs, saying there was round-the-clock skilled nursing. “It’s the highest priority case that Bureau of Prisons has,” Paetty said at one point, adding that the agency’s chief psychologist was involved.
The judge said she would make clear in her ruling that Girardi would be flown out the day of his surrender and taken via plane directly to the East Coast.
Girardi was found guilty in August of four counts of wire fraud for embezzling millions of dollars from his law firm’s clients, then using the funds to underwrite a lavish lifestyle for himself and his now-estranged wife, reality TV star Erika Girardi.
In advance of his trial, Girardi’s defense attorneys had contended that their client was mentally incompetent and suffered from a form of dementia. Staton disagreed and said that Girardi was cognitively impaired but competent and even showed signs of exaggerating his dementia symptoms.
At trial, prosecutors presented evidence that Girardi’s law firm, Girardi Keese, was run like a Ponzi scheme, where clients’ settlements were misappropriated to cover other law firm debts or finance his lavish spending. The firm collapsed in late 2020 amid evidence that he stole settlements from widows and orphans in an Indonesian plane crash, and hundreds of former clients and vendors came forward saying they were collectively cheated out of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Girardi testified in his own defense, where some of his alleged cognitive impairments were on display to the jury. “Every client got every penny that every client was supposed to get,” he told jurors.
“Is your law firm still open, Tom?” Cross asked.
“Yes,” Girardi said.
Jurors convicted him after four hours of deliberation.
