The Princeton graduate accused of fatally shooting his father after his allowance was slashed by $100 refused Thursday to attend his own murder trial.
Defense lawyer Arnold Levine visited defendant Thomas Gilbert Jr. in a cell tucked behind the courtroom to try to persuade him to come out.
“Mr. Gilbert refused to talk to me except to say that he declined,” Levine told Justice Melisa Jackson. “He made no eye contact the entire time I was in front of him.”
During the first week of testimony, the judge repeatedly scolded Gilbert for a series of outbursts, including shouting “Objection” during his own lawyer’s cross-examination of witnesses.
On Monday, the judge finally booted him from the courtroom after he interrupted the proceedings to address the jury directly, rattling off a series of incomprehensible phrases laden with legal language.
Three court officers had to drag him out as he railed against “prosecutorial misconduct.” Jackson let him return 20 minutes later after he promised to behave.
Levine asked the judge Tuesday to order a mental competency exam for the third time since the trial began. He said Gilbert takes copious notes but refuses to let him see them and will not communicate with him.
“He’s certainly not assisting in his defense given his mental state,” Levine said. The attorney characterized Gilbert’s repeated outbursts as “legal gibberish.”Assistant DA Craig Ortner countered that more than one legal expert determined that Gilbert, 34, was faking his symptoms. Levine said that examiner was hired by the prosecution.
Before the Jan. 4, 2015, slaying, Gilbert struggled to hold a job and lived off the largess of his parents.
Ortner has argued that the defendant was so enraged when his hedge fund millionaire father, Thomas Gilbert Sr., slashed his allowance, he showed up at his parents’ Beekman Place pad and shot him in the head.
The defense has countered that Gilbert, who suffers from schizophrenia, was in the midst of a psychotic break when he pulled the trigger.
The Manhattan Supreme Court trial got underway Tuesday without Gilbert present.