Nora Grace-Flood photo
Public defender Arabolos and defendant Pan in court on Thursday.
The suspect in the 2021 high-profile murder of Yale graduate student Kevin Jiang has a new lawyer – and a new date on which his jury trial is set to begin.
That was the upshot of a brief state court hearing at 235 Church St. Thursday morning in the state’s ongoing criminal prosecution of Qinxuan Pan. Pan is the former MIT artificial intelligence researcher who has been charged with the Feb. 6, 2021 murder of 26-year-old Yale grad student Kevin Jiang near Jiang’s fiancee’s apartment on Lawrence Street in East Rock.
Pan was joined in-person Thursday by Molly Arabolos, the public defender who officially signed onto his case as of Thursday. Arabolos replaces private criminal defense attorneys Norm Pattis and Kevin Smith, whom Pan dropped earlier this year.
Public Defender Molly Arabolos.
Other than making her first public appearance in the case, the only reason Arabolos came in front of state Superior Court Judge Gerald Harmon on Thursday was to express that the state is still providing herself with a “substantial amount of discovery” and to schedule another pre-trial hearing, which will take place on June 21. Click here to read about how that same judge signed off on the murder case moving ahead to a trial by jury after a two-day probable cause haering.
“I did have a conversation with Pan down in lock-up today,” Arabolos added on Thursday, “and going forward we’ll just be asking for virtual pre-trial.” In other words, that June 21 hearing will take place on a screen rather than in a courtroom.
Harmon also said Thursday that the court is moving forward with jury selection as Arabolos dives into the new case to which she was just assigned.
He set this upcoming Oct. 10 as the date on which Pan’s formal murder trial is expected to begin.
Judge Harmon Thursday.
