HAMILTON, Ohio — There is still no consensus from the jury on whether Gurpreet Singh is innocent or guilty of murdering four members of his family including his wife, Shalinderjit Kaur; her parents Hakiakat Singh Pannag and Parmjit Kaur; and Parmjit's sister, Amarjit Kaur.
The jury began deliberating Wednesday afternoon, but entered the courtroom almost 12 hours later to tell Judge Gregory Howard it is not able to unanimously reach a verdict yet. Howard asked if there was a possibility the jurors could reach an agreement after additional time, to which the foreperson said yes.
"Very well then, I want you to go back into the jury room and I want you to continue with your deliberations," Howard said.
After 14 hours, the judge sent the jurors back to their hotel rooms. Deliberation will resume in the morning.
Family of the four killed have been in and out of the courtroom, anxious for a verdict. Garry Hans, whose mother Amarjit was killed in the shooting, said he could not sleep the night before, but seeing handfuls of people from Cincinnati's Sikh community support them brings some relief.
"It means a lot (that) like whole Sikh community from Cincinnati and other places, they come and help us," Hans said. "And some people they come, they calling us and they're (watching) the news. They're watching live trial and they're sending blessings to us."
Between sessions, family members said they have been going to their temple to pray.
Prosecutors spent 10 days trying to convince jurors Singh pulled the trigger, while 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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