Legal News

Uma Fan: Stalker or ?Misfit With Strange Sense of Humor??

By Dan Slater

Update: On Tuesday morning, a Manhattan jury convicted Jordan. He faces up to a year in jail. Click here for the AP account.

To what extent does celebrity affect a district attorney’s decision to prosecute, say, an alleged stalker? Yesterday, when George Vomvolakis, the lawyer for Jack Jordan, who is accused of stalking actress Uma Thurman, gave his closing arguments in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan he argued that because Thurman “is larger than life,” the DA’s office “went the extra mile.” He said that if a less famous woman had been involved, she might might have merely kicked Jordan “to the curb,” but he wouldn’t have faced criminal charges. Click here for Anemona Hartocollis’s wrap-up piece in the NYT, and here for past LB coverage of the trial.

In closing arguments yesterday, reports Hartocollis, the defense tried to paint Jordan, 37, as a social misfit with a strange sense of humor, while the prosecution attempted to brand him a dangerous, manipulative liar, who should’ve known that he was putting Thurman, 38, in fear for her life. Jordan, a University of Chicago grad who, reports the NY Post, has been sleeping on Manhattan sidewalks during the trial, stands accused of following and sending threatening cards and e-mail messages to Thurman on and off for about two and a half years.

Vomvolakis, Jordan’s lawyer, reportedly told the jury, “Think about your lives and what you have done in your lives in the name of love,” he urged. “Think about the stupid things you have done.”

Jessica Taub, the lead prosecutor, said Jordan had hounded and frightened Thurman, which is part of the legal definition of stalking. “He wanted to be with Uma Thurman and he would not take no for an answer,” Taub said. “I mean, really, the manipulation here, you have to see it.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on May 06, 2008 (boomark / email).