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
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