Jury selection continued this week in the capital murder trial of a man accused of killing a South Asian American immigrant after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Testimony in the trial is expected to begin in the first week of September.
Prosecutors say Frank Silva Roque drove to a gasoline station in Mesa, Ariz., an east Phoenix suburb, and fatally shot owner Balbir Singh Sodhi, an Indian American who wore a turban in accordance with his Sikh faith.
Roque also is accused of shooting at a Lebanese American clerk at another gas station and firing into the home of a family of Afghan descent later that day. No one else was hurt.
The trial is expected to last at least a month.
Prosecutor Vince Imbordino said he expects to call between 40 and 50 witnesses. Defense attorneys will rely heavily on medical testimony, arguing that Roque suffered from undiagnosed schizophrenia.
The jury will be asked to consider whether the alleged gunman in the Sept. 15, 2001 killing, Frank Silva Roque, committed a racially motivated hate crime, or whether a mental illness was to blame.
Sodhi’s family believes the first argument is the truth. “As far as I’m concerned, my brother is a victim of 9-11,” said Sodhi’s brother, Lakhwinder “Rana” Singh Sodhi.
Balbir Sodhi had been outside his gas station when authorities say Roque drove up and shot him. The shootings rocked the Phoenix area and had repercussions far beyond. News of Sodhi’s death touched off protests in his homeland and prompted India’s prime minister to call President Bush. About 3,000 people attended a memorial service for Sodhi the week after the shootings.
Authorities have never directly said the shootings were in retaliation for the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, but they have characterized them as hate crimes.
“Mr. Sodhi was apparently killed for no other reason than because he was dark-skinned, bearded and wore a turban. He was killed because of hate,” Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley said the day he filed the charges against Roque.
Police reports also quoted Roque as saying “I’m a patriot” and that he was “standing up for his brothers and sisters” in New York after his arrest on the day of the shootings.
Roque’s public defenders, Daniel Patterson and Robert Stein, plan to present a “guilty except insane” defense.
As such, they will concede the basic facts of the case but are expected to argue that undiagnosed schizophrenia — not racial prejudice — triggered Roque’s actions.
If the jury agrees, he wouldn’t be subject to the death penalty that prosecutors are seeking. But he would be confined to a state hospital until doctors determine he is no longer a threat.
If the jury finds Roque guilty, mental illness could still be used as a factor in sparing him from the death penalty, Stein said.
— Beth DeFalco