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Thread: Raghunandan Yandamuri - Pennsylvania Death Row

  1. #21
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Double Murderer Plans to Represent Himself During Appeal

    By SUNITA SOHRABJI
    India West

    Notorious killer Raghunandan Yandamuri, who has been sentenced to death for killing an Indian American baby girl and her grandmother in their Pennsylvania home, will represent himself during an appeal to the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court.

    Following a hearing July 20, Montgomery County, Penn., Court of Common Pleas Judge Steven O’Neill ruled that Yandamuri could represent himself but also appointed two standby attorneys Stephen Heckman and Henry Hilles, who had also served as standby attorneys for the killer during his trial, at which he also represented himself.

    “As much as this court is reluctant to grant such relief, I feel I am compelled to,” O’Neill said, as reported by local media. O’Neill characterized Heckman and Hilles as “zealous advocates” who “uphold the Constitution every waking day of their lives.” Yandamuri had fired Heckman before his trial, but O’Neill re-appointed him as stand-by counsel.

    Following a two-week trial in October 2014, Yandamuri, 29, was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in the 2012 deaths of 61-year-old Satyavathi Venna and her 10-month-old grand-daughter Saanvi Venna at their apartment home in King of Prussia, Penn., in October 2012. The software engineer – who is in the U.S. on an H-1B visa – attempted to kidnap Saanvi in an attempt to get a $50,000 ransom from her parents. Yandamuri, whose wife was pregnant with the couple’s first child at the time of the killings, was heavily in debt, largely due to his gambling addiction.

    Saanvi was the first child of software engineers Latha and Venkata Venna; Satyavathi was Venkata’s mother. The Yandamuris and Vennas lived in the same apartment complex and were frequent guests at each other’s homes.

    The Andhra Pradesh native was sentenced Nov. 20, 2014 to death by lethal injection (http://bit.ly/1D6RNR6). Before his sentence was delivered, Yandamuri told Judge O’Neill he wished to die. “I don’t want this hearing; I would rather take the death penalty.”

    Heckman and Hilles both stated that Yandamuri has a tough road ahead, noting the difficulty of finding resources at the prison library and the killer’s inchoate ramblings during oral and written arguments.

    A hearing date has not been set. New York attorney Ravi Batra told India-West after Yandamuri was sentenced to death that the Indian government could technically invoke Article 36 of the Vienna Convention of Consular Relations and return Yandamuri to India to escape the death penalty, as a local consulate had not been informed of the charges against the software engineer.

    The U.S. has never ratified the VCCR.

    http://www.indiawest.com/news/global...7d52943b8.html

  2. #22
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    Convicted Baby/Grandma Killer Loses Bid to Charge Detective With Fraud

    By SUNITA SOHRABJI
    India West

    Raghunandan Yandamuri, who killed an Indian American 10-month-old baby and her grandmother in 2012 in Pennsylvania during a botched kidnapping attempt, lost his bid Jan. 6 to charge a detective involved in his case with fraud.

    On Oct. 10, 2014, before being sentenced to death for the gruesome killings, Yandamuri told Montgomery County Common Pleas Court Judge Steven T. O'Neill: “I don’t want this hearing. I would rather take the death penalty.” O’Neill sentenced Yandamuri to die by lethal injection.

    A day earlier, jurors convicted the 27-year-old of two counts of first degree murder for killing 10-month-old Saanvi Venna and her grandmother, Satyavathi Venna, who was visiting from India after the birth of her first grandchild.

    Yandamuri was also convicted of seven felonies relating to kidnapping and burglary. He was also convicted of one misdemeanor charge for abusing a corpse. During the trial, prosecutors said Yandamuri – a neighbor of the Venna family who frequently socialized with them – first killed Satyavathi, then combed the Vennas’ apartment for valuables. He then stuffed baby Saanvi into a suitcase and fled the apartment with the suitcase, which he stashed in a basement gym.

    Saanvi was the first child of Indian American software engineers Latha and Venkata Venna; Satyavathi was Venkata’s mother.

    Prosecutors during the trial said Yandamuri was attempting to get ransom money from the Vennas to support his heavy gambling debts and his pregnant wife. Police captured Yandamuri at a gambling casino.

    Since his sentencing, Yandamuri has filed an appeal saying he was coerced into confessing the crimes. The Andhra Pradesh native – who has lived in the U.S. since 2010 on an H-1B temporary worker’s visa – has fired his court-appointed lawyers and is representing himself. A court date has not yet been set for the appeal.

    On Jan. 5, Yandamuri appeared in court to seek permission to file a criminal complaint against Montgomery County, Penn., Detective Paul Bradbury, the lead investigator in the double murder case. In making his plea, Yandamuri said Bradbury had committed perjury in his testimony during the October 2014 trial.

    “He made inconsistent statements. Detective Bradbury contradicted his testimony,” said Yandamuri in court, implying that Judge Steven O’Neill – who presided over the case – was misled by Bradbury’s testimony.

    Montgomery County Deputy District Attorney Thomas W. McGoldrick defended the investigator. “We believe that Detective Bradbury was absolutely honest at every stage of the pretrial motions and at the trial in this case and Judge O’Neill’s decision and the jury’s decision back that up,” said McGoldrick.

    A day later – Jan. 6 – Montgomery County Judge Gary S. Silow ruled that Yandamuri could not file a criminal complaint against Bradbury. Silow did not elaborate on his ruling.

    Last year, Yandamuri had filed a similar petition with the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office, but prosecutors disallowed the complaint, saying it lacked merit.

    http://www.indiawest.com/news/global...260881c3e.html

  3. #23
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    Convicted Baby Killer Raghunandan Yandamuri Loses Appeal to Have Two Death Sentences Overturned

    By SUNITA SOHRABJI
    India West

    Raghunandan Yandamuri – convicted of the 2012 murder of an Indian American baby girl and her grandmother in Merion County, Pennsylvania – lost an appeal April 26 to have his two death sentences overturned.

    Yandamuri, an Andhra Pradesh native, is the first Indian to receive the death penalty in the U.S. He is currently incarcerated at the Greene State Correctional Institution, a maximum security prison in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania.

    In 2014, Yandamuri was sentenced to die by lethal injection for murdering 10-month-old Saanvi Venna and her 61-year-old grandmother, Satyavathi Venna. A jury deliberated for just three hours before declaring Yandamuri guilty. He was sentenced to die by lethal injection.

    After he was arrested in 2012, the killer provided a chilling account of how he entered the Vennas’ apartment while Saanvi’s parents, Venkata and Latha, were at work. He fatally stabbed Satyavathi – who was attempting to protect her granddaughter – before kidnapping the baby, which he hoped to use to obtain $50,000 in ransom from her parents.

    Yandamuri and his wife Komali were friends with the Vennas and lived in the same apartment building in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

    After kidnapping Saanvi, Yandamuri covered her mouth and stuffed the baby in a suitcase, then left her at a basement gym in the apartment building, where she suffocated to death. During a frantic three-day search by police and the local community, Yandamuri handed out missing baby flyers.

    The H-1B tech worker was arrested later that week at a local gambling casino. Earlier India-West stories reported that Yandamuri had accrued $35,000 in gambling debts and had filed for bankruptcy while working in Northern California. His wife Komali was pregnant at the time of the murders.

    At his appeals hearing, Yandamuri told Pennsylvania Supreme Court Judge Max Baer that police had coerced a confession from him. He claimed they paid no attention to his claims that two white men forced him to commit the murders by threatening to harm his wife.

    But the judge noted that Yandamuri had made a lengthy confession to police, and led them to baby Saanvi’s dead body. After his initial confession, Yandamuri recanted and told police about the other men, said Baer, also noting that an alibi he presented to police was contradicted by statements from his wife.

    Baer upheld both death sentences.

    In a 2012 interview, Venkata Venna told India-West he had treated Komali like a sister. His mother Satyavathi had taken the expecting wife under her wing, offering advice on her pregnancy and cooking her favorite foods.

    Jurors reportedly wept as Venkata Venna testified at the 2014 trial about finding his mother lying in a pool of blood.

    “I’ll never forget that moment in my life,” said Venna, tearfully. “I don’t know how I’m living, how I’m working,” he said.

    http://www.indiawest.com/news/global...0dfe2c144.html

  4. #24
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    On August 24, 2017, Yandamuri filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    https://dockets.justia.com/docket/pe...cv03798/533883
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  5. #25
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Execution Date Set For Upper Merion Baby Killer

    An execution date has been set for the Upper Merion man sentenced to death for murdering a baby in 2012.

    By Justin Heinze,
    Patch.com

    UPPER MERION, PA -- An execution date for the Upper Merion man convicted of killing a baby and her grandmother has been set for February, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections announced.

    Raghunandan Yandamuri, 32, was convicted in 2014 of the October 2012 stabbing death of 61-year-old Satyavathi Venna, as well as the suffocation death of Saanvi Venna, her 10-month-old granddaughter. The killings were part of a botched kidnapping- for-ransom plot attempted by the defendant, authorities have alleged.

    Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel signed the notice of execution on Monday. The date has been set for Feb. 23.

    "The law provides that when the governor does not sign a warrant of execution within the specified time period, the secretary of corrections has 30 days within which to issue a notice of execution," the Department of Corrections said in a statement on Monday.

    The death sentence for Yandamuri, who holds an advanced degree in electrical and computer science engineering, must be signed by Gov. Tom Wolf, who declared a moratorium on the death penalty in the state in 2015. The moratorium will be in place until Gov. Wolf has reviewed the report of the Pennsylvania Task Force and Advisory Commission on Capital Punishment. In the meantime, the governor has said that a temporary reprieve will be granted to death row inmates.

    "This moratorium is in no way an expression of sympathy for the guilty on death row, all of whom have been convicted of committing heinous crimes," Gov. Wolf said in 2015. "This decision is based on a flawed system that has been proven to be an endless cycle of court proceedings as well as ineffective, unjust, and expensive."

    Yandamuri has gone through a lengthy appeals process, and most recently had the death sentence imposed on him upheld by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2017, according to court documents.

    Only three people have been executed in Pennsylvania since 1976, all of them between 1995 and 1999 under Gov. Tom Ridge. No one has been executed in the state in nearly 20 years.

    In 2015, a Montgomery County jury convicted Yandamuri, a former friend of the Venna family, of first-degree murder for each slaying, handing down a pair of death sentences.

    The case since has been unusual: Yandamuri determined to represent himself during the appeals process, and he also decided to press perjury charges against a detective who testified during his trial.

    In a decision penned by Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Max Baer, the court reaffirmed that the evidence to prosecute Yandamuri was sufficient, and cited numerous background elements supporting the jury's determination to execute. The court also responded to and refuted each of Yandamuri's claims about unfair treatment, including his allegations that his Miranda rights were not read and that he was arrested without probable cause.

    Yandamuri is being held at State Correctional Institute-Greene in Waynesburg, Greene County, in the southwestern corner of the state.

    https://patch.com/pennsylvania/norri...on-baby-killer

  6. #26
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Indian media is hyping up his execution. I guess they didn't get the memo about pa yet.

    India has executed 4 people in the past 19 years, only one wasn't a terrorist. It's extremely rare there for people to get executed.

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