In a more than four-year-old case in which one prosecutor is pushing forward with a murder charge dismissed by another, a Vermont judge said he wants to try to have it ready for trial in about six months.
“It’s obviously a very serious case for both sides, it’s been going on a long time, so there’s that piece of me that really wants to push it,” Judge John Pacht said Tuesday in the case against Aita Gurung, charged with killing his wife with a meat cleaver in October 2017.
On the other hand, the judge said during the video hearing, both the defense and prosecution have said they need more time to get the case ready for trial. He hopes to get the trial scheduled for September or October.
“While it’s extending the time longer than we hoped, we also have a lot, it seems, still to do,” Pacht said. “August for a trial doesn’t make any sense because everybody’s on vacation and we’re going to need a large jury pool.”
Among the items on that to-do list is figuring out how interpretation services will be provided for Gurung, who speaks Nepali.
“I’m talking to central office about different steps. As you know, there are different ways to do this,” Pacht said. One method, he said, is for an interpreter to take part remotely and provide simultaneous translation of the proceeding to Gurung through headphones.
“We’ve got to figure out how to make that part of the record, but I think we can do that,” the judge said.
According to court records, Gurung used a meat cleaver to kill his wife, Yogeswari Khadka, 32, on Oct. 12, 2017, at their home in the Old North End in Burlington. He is also accused of seriously injuring his mother-in-law, Thulsa Rimal, according to charging documents.
Gurung’s case was among three that Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George dismissed in 2019, with the other two including murder and attempted murder charges. George said she based those decisions on expert opinions about the defendants, and as a result she could not rebut insanity defenses raised in all three cases.
Gov. Phil Scott then called on Vermont Attorney General TJ Donovan to review those cases.
Donovan decided to bring the murder charge against Gurung two months later, in September 2019, taking the unusual move of stepping into a case after it had been dismissed by a county prosecutor. He also refiled charges in the other two cases that had been dismissed.
In Gurung’s case, his state of mind is expected to play a prominent role in his trial later this year. Attorneys on both sides talked Tuesday about the numerous witnesses, including several experts, they plan to call to the stand to show whether Gurung was insane at the time.
Assistant Attorney General John Waszak, the prosecutor, told the judge he could be ready for trial by September and October, adding that prepping for the case is a bit easier since it isn’t a “whodunit.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Judge tries to get 4-year-old murder case in Burlington on track for trial this year.
