Now Reading: Indian on US death row seeks fresh trial, citing bad lawyers
-
01
Indian on US death row seeks fresh trial, citing bad lawyers
Gurpreet Singh, an Indian-origin truck driver on death row in Ohio for the 2019 murders of his wife and her parents and aunt, is asking the Ohio Supreme Court for a third…
The Story in Brief
Gurpreet Singh, an Indian-origin truck driver on death row in Ohio for the 2019 murders of his wife and her parents and aunt, is asking the Ohio Supreme Court for a third trial. His lawyer Kathryn Sandford argues that previous attorneys were ineffective, partly because Singh's first language is Punjabi, creating a language barrier. Singh was convicted and sentenced to death in 2024 after two trials, with an execution date set for November 27, 2024, which has been stayed pending the appeal.
Prosecutors say Singh killed his family because he could not support both his wife's household and a secret mistress on his salary. The Butler County government paid over Rs 1.5 crore for Singh's defence across both trials, while prosecution costs added another Rs 22 lakh. No other suspect has been identified.
The Indian Opinion
The claim of a language barrier sounds plausible on its face, but two trials have already ended with a death sentence. If Punjabi fluency were truly the problem, why did it take the Supreme Court appeal to raise it? Taxpayers have already spent over 2 lakh dollars on his defence. The real test will be whether the Ohio court finds specific, concrete errors in the earlier lawyers' work, not just a general complaint about their effectiveness.
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
