|
 So voluble during her trial that she was held in contempt of
court, Genevieve Sabourin was tearful but largely mum as a judge
found her guilty of charges including stalking and harassment and
sentenced her to six months in jail. That was on top of a month
she's already serving because of her courtroom outbursts.
"I haven't done anything wrong. I'm innocent," she told Manhattan
Criminal Court Judge Robert Mandelbaum when he invited her to speak.
"You're doing a mistake right now."
Sabourin, who hails from the Montreal suburb of Candiac, had turned
down a plea offer that would have spared her jail time.
Baldwin's wife, Hilaria, said in a statement afterward that the two
"feel safe, relieved and happy to move forward" with the case
resolved.
The "30 Rock" actor testified that Sabourin, 41, turned his life
into a two-year-long horror film after they had dinner together. He
said the evening was only a chat about her career prospects, not the
romantic tryst she portrayed.
Baldwin, 55, said he repeatedly implored the actress to stop
contacting him before she ultimately was arrested in front of his
Manhattan apartment building in 2012, shortly after he and his wife
got engaged. The Baldwins met in 2011.
Sabourin testified that the actor took her on a fairy-tale date that
ended in bed, sketched out a future together and then sent mixed
messages about whether he wanted to hear from and see her again.
"She's not entitled to an explanation for a dream that he sold her?"
her lawyer, Todd Spodek, said in a closing argument. "Mr. Baldwin
doesn't have carte blanche to use the criminal justice system to
sort out his relationships."
[to top of second column] |
But the judge said that however Sabourin and Baldwin got to know
each other, she had no right to pursue contact she knew to be
unwanted and amounted to a "relentless and escalating campaign of
threats and in-person appearances."
Baldwin and Sabourin agree on this much: They first met during a
2000 movie shoot in Montreal and had dinner a decade later in New
York. Mutual friend Martin Bregman, producer of movies including "Scarface,"
had put the two in touch as Sabourin sought career help.
Baldwin said Sabourin then flooded him with calls and emails. After
a March 2012 message said she could infiltrate his apartment
building and his now-wife's yoga class, "I knew that she was
dangerous," Baldwin testified.
Then Sabourin turned up at a film screening he was hosting and at
his Hamptons and Manhattan homes, he said.
Baldwin acknowledged he sent Sabourin some friendly emails along the
way. He said he was just hoping a congenial approach would work
where appeals to leave him alone had failed.
She said she kept trying to communicate with him just to understand
what had happened between them, not to intimidate him.
"It's not, because he's rich and famous, that he can take advantage
of women and throw them in the garbage," she testified.
Prosecutors said what she called a quest for "closure" was an
obsession that crossed the line into crime.
"None of this is to say that the defendant's conduct in this case
isn't sad, but it doesn't make her conduct justifiable," Manhattan
Assistant District Attorney Zachary Stendig said in his summation.
[Associated
Press; JENNIFER PELTZ]
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