The previous CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch is affected by dementia and is not competent to stand trial on intercourse trafficking prices, in accordance with prosecutors and his legal professionals.
Michael Jeffries requires round the clock care as a result of the 80-year-old has Alzheimer’s illness, Lewy physique dementia and the “residual results of a traumatic mind damage,” protection attorneys wrote in a letter filed Thursday in a New York federal court docket, citing current evaluations by medical professionals.
Prosecutors and protection legal professionals need a federal choose in Central Islip to position Jeffries within the custody of the federal Bureau of Prisons for as much as 4 months in order that he could be hospitalized and obtain therapy that may enable his felony case to proceed.
Jeffries has been free on a $10 million bond since pleading not responsible in October to federal intercourse trafficking and interstate prostitution prices.
Prosecutors say Jeffries, his romantic accomplice and a 3rd man lured males to drug-fueled intercourse events in New York Metropolis, the Hamptons and different areas by dangling the promise of modeling for the retailer’s adverts.
Legal professionals for Jeffries didn’t instantly reply to an electronic mail looking for remark Friday. The U.S. legal professional’s workplace for the japanese district of New York declined to remark.
Of their letter, Jeffries’ legal professionals stated at the very least 4 medical professionals concluded that their consumer’s cognitive points are “progressive and incurable” and that he is not going to “regain his competency and can’t be restored to competency sooner or later.”
They stated the docs discovered that his cognitive points “considerably impair” his capability to know the costs towards him, and to seek the advice of and take part along with his counsel in his protection.
“The progressive nature of his neurocognitive dysfunction ensures continued decline over time, additional diminishing his already restricted useful capability,” Dr. Alexander Bardey, a forensic psychiatrist, and Dr. Cheryl Paradis, a forensic psychologist, wrote following their December evaluations. “It’s, subsequently, our skilled opinion, inside an inexpensive diploma of psychological and psychiatric certainty, that Mr. Jeffries is just not competent to proceed within the present case and can’t be restored to competency sooner or later.”
Jeffries left Abercrombie in 2014 after main the corporate for greater than twenty years. He presided over the retailer’s evolution from a Manhattan searching and out of doors items retailer based in 1892 to a fixture of minor mall tradition in the course of the early 2000s.
Jeffries’ accomplice, Matthew Smith, has additionally pleaded not responsible and stays out on bond, as does their co-defendant, James Jacobson.
This story was initially featured on Fortune.com
