A federal judge has rejected requests for new trials for two men involved in the smuggling of four Indians who froze to death while trying to cross into the United States during a blizzard in 2022.
U.S. District Judge John Tunheim in Minneapolis Tuesday declined to set aside the guilty verdicts that a jury returned last November against Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel aka “Dirty Harry,” and Steve Anthony Shand. His order clears the way for the two defendants to take their cases to a federal appeals court after he sentences them on May 7.
The judge found that there was sufficient evidence for the jury to find both Shand and Patel guilty on all four counts. He said the failure of prosecutors until late in the trial to disclose a prior disciplinary action against a Border Patrol agent who testified, while troubling, had a minimal impact on the overall case. He also stood by his decision to try the defendants together rather than separately.
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Prosecutors said during the trial that Patel, an Indian national, and Shand, an American from Florida, were part of a sophisticated illegal operation to smuggle Indians into the U.S.
They said the victims, 39-year-old Jagdish Patel; his wife, Vaishaliben, who was in her mid-30s; their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi; and 3-year-old son, Dharmik, froze to death just north of the Canadian border between Manitoba and Minnesota on Jan. 19, 2022.
The family was from Dingucha, a village in the western Indian state of Gujarat. The couple were schoolteachers, local news reports said.
Seven other members of their group survived the foot crossing. Patel is a common Indian surname, and the victims were not related to the defendant.
The most serious counts carry maximum sentences of up to 20 years in prison.