Thomas Breen photo
Norm Pattis, Qinxuan Pan, and Kevin Smith in court Tuesday.
The controversial local defense attorney Norm Pattis has taken on a new client: Qinxuan Pan, the MIT artificial intelligence researcher who allegedly murdered 26-year-old Yale grad student Kevin Jiang.
Pattis and fellow attorney Kevin Smith stood on either side of Pan Tuesday at noon during a brief hearing in a sixth floor courtroom at 235 Church St.
That marked a change in legal representation for Pan, whom the state has charged with shooting and killing Jiang near Jiang’s fiancee’s apartment on Lawrence Street in East Rock on Feb. 6. Pan had previously been represented in the ongoing murder case by Hartford-based attorney William Gerace. Gerace most recently appeared alongside his then-client in court during a bond hearing at the end of July.
Pattis is known across the state and country as a crusading and controversial defense attorney with a predilection for high-profile, long-odds cases. He recently represented Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist Alex Jones before the state Supreme Court.
Judge Gerald Harmon.
On Tuesday, state Superior Court Judge Gerald Harmon continued Pan’s case until Oct. 29.
Pattis told the judge that he and his client need a few weeks to review the trove of digitized discovery that the state’s attorney’s office provided to the defendant earlier in the day. They also are still waiting on the state Supreme Court to rule on Pan’s appeal to reduce his $20 million bond in the murder case.
Pan is currently being detained at Cheshire Correctional Institution.
“The state finally provided discovery,” Pattis said during a sidewalk interview outside the courthouse Tuesday after the five-minute court hearing. State prosecutors have also provided a “12-page, single-space inventory of items on a two-terabit hard drive.”
Smith and Pattis after Tuesday’s hearing.
Why did Pattis decide to take over Pan’s case from Gerace?
“How could you not take this case?” Pattis asked in response. “The world’s decided he’s guilty. There’s an alternative story to tell, a different perspective. Why wouldn’t you take this case?”
Pattis said that he believes that the state’s case against Pan “is not as strong as the warrant looks.”
There are “substantial questions about the identity of the shooter.” He referenced a New Haven police dispatch the night of the murder that identified the alleged shooter as a Black male, and that indicated that there may have been two people in the car involved in the shooting.
He also referenced the warrant’s mention of an eyewitness to a shooting that took place in Hamden an hour before Jiang’s murder who said that the driver of the car involved in that shooting may have been Hispanic. Police have connected the bullets used in that Hamden shooting to the bullets used in the Jiang homicide, as well as several other shootings that took place across New Haven in the weeks and months before Jiang’s murder.