Rockefeller guilty of two charges, not guilty of two
After almost a week of deliberations, the man known as Clark Rockefeller was found guilty today of one count of custodial kidnapping and one count of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. He was acquitted on two less serious charges: assault and battery and providing a false name to police.
This means that the jury did not buy the insanity defense that Rockefeller’s defense team used. They found that he was sane when he kidnapped his daughter, Reigh Boss, from a supervised visit and recklessly injured the visit supervisor, Howard Yaffe, by ordering his driver to go when Yaffe was hanging onto the SUV. However, the jury did not buy the prosecution’s contention that Rockefeller pushed Yaffe to the ground before getting into the SUV with his daughter. They also found that he did not give the name Clark Rockefeller to police for a dishonest purpose. He has gone by the name for 15 years, although he was born Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter in Germany.
The verdict was reached at 11:3o this morning. At 11:45 the foreman, Harvard law professor Michael Gregory, read all four verdicts aloud. Rockefeller, dressed in his usual navy jacket, khaki pants, white shirt, and red tie, didn’t seem to show any reaction to the verdicts but simply stared straight ahead.
Judge Frank Gaziano then announced that sentencing would be at 2:00, despite a defense request to have it take place next week.
Immediately after the verdict, Suffolk County D.A. Dan Conley gave a brief press conference where he announced, “This was a fair and just verdict to both the Commonwealth and the defendant.” He called it a “good thing” that the jury had taken so long to reach a verdict, since they demonstrated diligence and an understanding of the law. Juries take longer to reach verdicts than they did in the past, Conley said.
At 12:15 the jury re-entered the courtroom and sat in the jury box, where the foreman read a short statement. “This was a complicated case and not as clear cut as it might seem to those who have only followed it in the media,” he said. “We were very thorough in our deliberations…We considered all of the evidence presented at trial and only the evidence presented at trial. We are confident that our verdict is fair and just and based only on the information that we were legally allowed to consider.”
Sentencing took place at 2:00. The courtroom was packed, and in attendance were Yaffe and Aileen Ang, a former friend of Rockefeller who drove him and his daughter to New York after the kidnapping and testified for the prosecution earlier in the trial.
Assistant District Attorney David Deakin requested the maximum sentence of 4-5 years for the kidnapping and 20 years of supervised probation, with the conditions that Rockefeller have no contact with his ex-wife, Sandra Boss, or Reigh, that he have a psychological evaluation and receive any needed treatment, and that he not profit from selling his story.
Then Deakin read impact statements from Yaffe and Boss. Yaffe wrote that Rockefeller victimized him in both his personal and professional capacities. As a result of what happened, Yaffe and his family were harassed by the press, and his daughter’s 21st birthday party, which was the day after the kidnapping, was ruined. Worrying about Reigh’s safety caused him emotional stress and he is still concerned for her well-being today.
In her impact statement, Boss described the horror of not knowing where her daughter was for nearly a week. “While Reigh was gone, I faced a mother’s worst nightmare, the possibility of losing a child without a trace.” She said she lost a significant amount of privacy and that she and Reigh are trying to put the incident behind them and to balance concerns for Reigh’s safety with her growing need for independence.
Defense Attorney Jeffrey Denner asked for 0-2 years, saying that Rockefeller loved his daughter and has psychological problems which, although they do not make him insane according to the jury, do diminish his capacity to tell right from wrong. “We have a deeply troubled person. We have a person with a very long history of mental illness,” he said. “You have a guy who loved his daughter too much and made huge mistakes in trying to express that love.” Denner also objected to Deakin’s request that Rockefeller be psychologically assessed, arguing that that would violate his 5th Amendment rights.
Judge Frank Gaziano sentenced Rockefeller to 4-5 years in a state prison for the kidnapping and 2-3 years for the assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. The sentences will run concurrently. He rejected Deakin’s proposed conditions for probation.
In making his decision, Gaziano listed two mitigating factors: Rockefeller has no previous criminal record and was motivated, at least in part, by despair over losing Reigh. “The defendant was, by all accounts, a loving and devoted father to his daughter,” he said. However, he also listed as aggravating factors Rockefeller’s premeditation and callousness. “The defendant displayed no regard for the rule of law,” Gaziano said, nor did he seem to care about the impact of his actions on Boss, Reigh, or Yaffe.
Defense attorneys and prosecutors spoke at a press conference after the sentencing in the same courtroom where the entire trial took place, courtroom 906. ”We’re content,” said Denner, giving the jury credit for considering the case fairly even though he did not get the result he wanted. Rockefeller “has got a long course ahead of him,” Denner said, referring to possible deportation proceedings and possible charges in the California disappearance of Linda and John Sohus. “It is an uncertain path that he and Reigh have together,” he said when asked if Rockefeller would ever see his daughter again. Denner admitted that insanity defenses and high-profile cases are usually uphill battles. “There’s a certain level of disappointment about that,” he said about the jury’s rejection of the insanity claim. Although he had doubts that the panel of a professor and mostly young people was truly a jury of Rockefeller’s peers, Denner said, “I have no reason to believe it was anything but a fair trial.”
After that, Conley, Deakin, and Sgt. Ray Mosher and Det. Joe Leeman of the Boston Police went to the podium. Conley thanked Deakin, Mosher, and Leeman, called the sentence “very well thought-out,” and praised the defense team of Denner and attorney Tim Bradl, who “conducted themselves with collegiality and represented their client well.” Deakin praised the jury, saying “All prosecutors would prefer an intelligent and attentive jury regardless of their age or other demographics.” He told the media that Boss was alerted when the jury reached their verdict and that “she was profoundly and deeply relieved.” In response to questions about how Boss could believe Rockefeller’s plethora of far-fetched stories during the course of their marriage, Deakin replied, “All of his past before she met him was a mystery to her because he made it that way.” Her testimony was important because “the jury got to know her, to understand her perspective.”
That was the end of this busy day at Suffolk Superior Court. This weekend I’ll make a short post about what could be next for Rockefeller.