{"id":48328,"date":"2026-03-27T10:51:30","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T10:51:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/abercrombie-fitch-ex-ceo-is-fit-for-sex-trafficking-trial-and-hes-funny-too-prison-doctor-tells-judge\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T10:51:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T10:51:30","slug":"abercrombie-fitch-ex-ceo-is-fit-for-sex-trafficking-trial-and-hes-funny-too-prison-doctor-tells-judge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/abercrombie-fitch-ex-ceo-is-fit-for-sex-trafficking-trial-and-hes-funny-too-prison-doctor-tells-judge\/","title":{"rendered":"Abercrombie &amp; Fitch ex-CEO is fit for sex trafficking trial\u2014 and he&#8217;s funny, too, prison doctor tells judge"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69c5b93fb87081653c9a66df?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Michael Jeffries at an event in NYC in 2005\"\/><figcaption>Michael Jeffries at an event in NYC in 2005<\/p>\n<p>The International Center of Photography<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Lawyers for the ex-CEO of Abercrombie &amp; Fitch say he&#039;s unfit to stand trial for sex trafficking.<\/li>\n<li>At a court hearing on Thursday, a prison doctor called Michael Jeffries &quot;logical&quot; and &quot;funny.&quot;<\/li>\n<li>She testified that he joked, &quot;We could be married. I&#039;m gay, but that doesn&#039;t matter.&quot;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Michael Jeffries \u2014 the former Abercrombie &amp; Fitch CEO whose racy ads fueled the chain&#039;s meteoric rise in the 2000s \u2014 is mentally fit to stand trial for sex trafficking, a prosecution psychologist testified on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>Jeffries, 81, was logical, &quot;jovial,&quot; and often funny during two days of testing last year, according to Tracy O&#039;Connor Pennuto, the federal prison system&#039;s only forensic neuropsychologist.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;&#039;We could be married,&#039;&quot; Pennuto recalled the ex-CEO telling her during one evaluation. &quot;I&#039;m gay, but that doesn&#039;t matter,&quot; she said he added.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;He had appropriate humor,&quot; she told the federal judge presiding over Jeffries&#039; competency hearing in Central Islip, NY. &quot;He was funny.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>The ex-CEO was able to handle his commissary account and manage his phone time throughout his four-month stay at the mental health unit of a North Carolina prison, Pennuto testified.<\/p>\n<p>And while his defense lawyers say Jeffries suffers from major cognitive impairment \u2014 the result, they say, of progressing Alzheimer&#039;s disease and a neurodegenerative condition called Lewy body dementia \u2014 Jeffries shows only mild impairment, Pennuto countered.<\/p>\n<p>The ex-CEO does not display the memory loss and lack of function associated with Alzheimer&#039;s, she testified. In fact, he performed &quot;better than probably 90% of the patients that we assess for competency,&quot; she said.<\/p>\n<p>Thursday&#039;s testimony came on the third day of a weeklongcompetency hearing before US District Judge Nusrat Chowdhury, who will also preside over Jeffries&#039;s sex trafficking trial, scheduled to begin October 26.<\/p>\n<p>At issue is whether the former Abercrombie &amp; Fitch CEO understands the charges against him and is capable of assisting in his own defense, the two criteria for competency.<\/p>\n<p>Chowdhury has not said when she will rule on Jeffries&#039; competency; the hearing, originally slated for three days, is now scheduled to continue Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this week, three defense witnesses testified that scans and verbal assessments show that Jeffries&#039; brain is atrophying.<\/p>\n<p>Defense psychiatrist on Wednesday cited the ex-CEO&#039;s identical response when asked when he graduated from high school, college, and the London School of Economics: &quot;1962.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>More significantly, Jeffries cannot understand or even name the charges against him, and is prone to profanity and outbursts, the defense&#039;s experts told the judge.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;There was no sense of gravity,&quot; defense psychiatrist Dr. Alexander Bardey told the judge on Wednesday. &quot;His demeanor was like he was at some sort of cocktail party.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday, Jeffries&#039; prison psychologist said that he called her &quot;bitch&quot; and &quot;girl&quot; during their interviews, and cursed, too, when frustrated by the more difficult questions in her testing.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;He was purposefully testing the limits and enjoying it, to see what my reaction would be,&quot; Pennuto said, &quot;but he was able to inhibit that behavior&quot; when asked, she added.<\/p>\n<p>Jeffries was CEO from 1992 until his 2014 retirement, helming an international clothing chain beloved by teenage millennials and masterminding a yearslong ad campaign featuring shirtless, athletic young men.<\/p>\n<p>Prosecutors say that during his final eight years at the retail giant&#039;s helm, Jeffries used his wealth and power to abuse dozens of aspiring A&amp;F models at drug-fueled &quot;sex events&quot; at his secluded Hamptons estate and at luxury hotels in Manhattan, Europe, Morocco, and Saint Barthelemy.<\/p>\n<p>Jeffries&#039; co-defendants in the case are his longtime romantic partner, Matthew Smith, and James Jacobson, a former A&amp;F employee.<\/p>\n<p>The three were arrested in October 2024 on charges of sex trafficking and interstate prostitution involving 15 accusers, and have pleaded not guilty.<\/p>\n<p>They face a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years and as much as life in prison if convicted.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Jeffries at an event in NYC in 2005 The International Center of Photography Lawyers for the ex-CEO of Abercrombie &amp; Fitch say he&#039;s unfit to stand trial for sex trafficking. At a court hearing on Thursday, a prison doctor called Michael Jeffries &quot;logical&quot; and &quot;funny.&quot; She testified that he joked, &quot;We could be married. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48329,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-48328","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}