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The former mental patient convicted yesterday of stalking actress Uma Thurman was ordered by a judge to be kept in jail for a month to undergo psychiatric examination before he is sentenced.
Jack Jordan, 37, of Maryland, showed no emotion as a jury in Manhattan State Supreme Court convicted him just before noon of stalking and aggravated harassment - both misdemeanors - for actions over a two-year period driven by his obsessive love for the "Pulp Fiction" star.
The panel of six men and six women, which had deliberated for about five hours since Monday, acquitted him of two other charges of aggravated harassment.
Assistant District Attorney Jessica Taub asked Judge Gregory Carro to immediately put Jordan in a Manhattan jail next to the courthouse pending his sentence, a move vehemently opposed by
defense attorney George Vomvolakis.
"I was disturbed by the things I learned about the
defendant during the case," replied Carro, who ordered Jordan taken into custody for a presentence evaluation. Officials said Jordan was placed in protective custody after Vomvolakis said he had previously been assaulted in jail.
Beau Bentson, Thurman's Manhattan publicist, said yesterday the actress wouldn't have any comment. Thurman's father, Robert, didn't return messages for comment.
A court officer immediately snapped handcuffs on Jordan, who was led away. Jordan had testified about being involuntarily committed to a Maryland psychiatric treatment center in late 2005 for schizophrenia.
Jordan faces up to a year in jail for the harassment conviction but Vomvolakis said he didn't think he would serve further time.
During the trial, evidence showed that Jordan, the son of a nuclear scientist, developed an obsession for the Oscar-nominated star while in high school. He sent scores of e-mails to Thurman's father and spoke with her mother in a futile effort to talk with the star, at times threatening suicide because of his inability to get her to respond.
At one point, Jordan came to Manhattan and walked around Greenwich Village until he spotted Thurman's town house from a photograph he had seen in a magazine, he testified. He made visits to the home while Thurman was away on vacation, sometimes sitting on the front stairs and slipping letters through the door.
One juror said that it was Jordan's uninvited visits to Thurman's home that sunk him on the harassment charge.
"He stepped over the line when he went to her house," said the juror, who identified herself only as Marsha.
A caterer from Greenwich Village for rock concerts, she said Thurman's life seemed changed by the stalking.
"I felt very sorry for her because she has lost her freedom forever," she said of Thurman.
