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Lawyers: 'Rockefeller" verdicts expected, surprising

E-mail|Link|Comments () June 12, 2009 12:51 PM

By John R. Ellement, Globe staff

The 'Rockefeller' jurors acted both as expected and in a mysterious way in reaching their verdicts, veteran defense attorneys said today.

By rejecting the insanity defense, attorneys said the Suffolk Superior Court jury reached the conclusion most juries reached when wrestling with a case where mental illness has been raised as a way to excuse criminal behavior.

"It's not unusual that a jury finds an individual to be sane at the time,'' said Timothy J. Burke, a former Suffolk County prosecutor who now is a Needham defense attorney. "Although the individual exhibits bizarre behavior, it's extremely difficult to establish the necessary elements regarding the insanity defense. So, I am not surprised.''

But Burke and other attorneys were puzzled by the panel's decision to acquit Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter of giving a false name to police, given that authorities have seemed to produced overwhelming proof that Gerhartsreiter is not now, nor has ever been, a Rockefeller.

"I don't think anyone can explain that without having been inside the jury room,'' Burke said.

Boston defense attorney Michael P. Doolin suggested that the jury had some compassion for Gerhartsreiter and acquitted him for the false name charge because they concluded the German immigrant believes his own fiction.

"I think the government proved that wasn't his name,'' Doolin said. "The jury, perhaps, decided that he has been given that name for so long, he thought it was his name.''

Doolin said that as a defense attorney, he rarely chooses to use the insanity defense because it so infrequently successful. In the "Rockefeller'' case, he added, Suffolk Assistant District Attorney David Deakin generated powerful evidence showing Gerhartsreiter mapped out the kidnapping in advance.

Prosecutors showed the kidnapping "was deliberate and well planned out. They weren't the act of someone who was suffering from some sort of mental illness,'' he said.

Gerhartsreiter is to be sentenced at 2 p.m. by Suffolk Superior Court Judge Frank M. Gaziano, a former federal and Plymouth County prosecutor who was involved in the death penalty case of drifter Gary Sampson.

The attorneys said they consider Gaziano to be a "fair judge'' who is likely to impose a sentence of about five years, which would be below the maximum but above the three years Gerhartsreiter would have gotten if he accepted a plea deal earlier this year.

"I think he is really a fair guy,'' Doolin said.

Burke said he expects Gaziano to take into account what kind of parent Gerhartsreiter was before he agreed to accept hundreds of thousands of dollars in payment from his ex-wife, Sandra Boss, in return for giving up custody of his daughter.

"It doesn't excuse what he (Gerhartsreiter) did,'' Burke said, "but it would give me pause as a judge to assess what's appropriate here.''