HAMILTON, Ohio — Gurpreet Singh's fate lies in the hands of a Butler County jury. They began deliberating Wednesday afternoon.
Prosecutors accuse Singh of killing four members of his family including his wife, Shalinderjit Kaur; her parents Hakiakat Singh Pannag and Parmjit Kaur; and Parmjit's sister, Amarjit Kaur.
Singh's defense called just one witness to testify Wednesday morning.
Christopher Robinson, a former crime lab director for the City of Atlanta, runs a forensics consulting firm hired to be a blood spatter expert for the defense. Robinson told jurors he reviewed evidence reports made by Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation agents. Based on DNA, Gurpeet Singh could not be the killer, Robinson testified. Investigators found blood on the clothes Singh wore that night. However, it contained only a confirmed DNA profile that belonged to Shalinderjit.
"In my opinion, I think it'd be impossible for a shooter to come in here and shoot four people and only have one person's DNA and (that) can be accounted for by him holding his wife because he found them," Robinson told jurors. "There's no way, no evidence to conclude that Gurpreet was the shooter of these victims."
Prosecutors attacked Robinson's credentials and credibility. When questioned on the stand, Robinson admitted he'd been fired from his job with the Atlanta crime lab.
During closing arguments, Butler County assistant prosecutors Josh Muennich and Jon Marshall told jurors Singh is the only possible killer.
Prosecutors said Singh's marriage and finances unraveled because he spent almost $45,000 on a long-standing affair with a woman in Indianapolis named Navkiran Kaur. Singh's family found out and planned to keep money from a land deal in India away from Gurpreet, prosecutors told jurors.
The night of the murders, April 28, 2019, prosecutors said Singh arranged to have his cousins keep his three children away from the family's apartment.
Cell phone, car GPS and Google data also put Singh inside his apartment minutes before the killings, Muennich told jurors. Prosecutors claim the killer shot victims from behind, suggesting the shooter was not a stranger to those killed.
"All the evidence in this case leads to one person and one person only and that's this defendant," Muennich told the jury during closing arguments. "Ladies and gentlemen that's why he is guilty beyond any doubt of committing the crime of aggravated murder."
Singh's lead attorney, Charlie Rittgers, pushed back.
"None of three of (the victims') blood is on Gurpreet Singh," Rittgers told jurors. "None. Hakiakat, Parmjit, Amarjit. None of it. You (saw) how gory these crime scene photos are and the back spatter that would be created and yet there's none on Gurpreet. None of it."
Closing arguments lasted four hours with Rittgers pushing 14 reasons for reasonable doubt.
"They're trying to kill a man," he told Rittgers said during closing arguments. "They are resting their case on the fact that Gurpreet was not completely, openly honest by openly speaking with police about every detail of what happened. We're in the United States of America. We're in the United States of America. You don't have to talk to the police. Lying to the police is not a crime and it's not a reason to convict a person of murder."
"(The victims) were alive until he got home," Marshall told the jury. "That is the one uncontroverted fact in this case that cannot be explained away that can't be addressed with fantastical, rhetorical questions, what ifs, or anything else. The simple truth of this case is that at 9:09 p.m. this defendant arrived in the parking lot and by 9:11 p.m. he was inside that apartment and those four innocent people, they were alive."
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