Nora Grace-Flood photo
Supervisory Assistant State’s Attorney Stacey Miranda and Assistant State’s Attorney Kelly Davis make their case while defense attorney Kevin Smith sits with suspect Qinxuan Pan Tuesday.
A state judge signed off on Qinxuan Pan’s murder case moving ahead to a trial by jury — after a second day of courtroom testimony shone a light on key evidence involving slain Yale grad student Kevin Jiang’s blood and body tissue.
State Superior Court Judge Jon Alander issued that ruling Tuesday at the end of a two-day probable cause hearing in Pan’s ongoing criminal case.
After listening to several hours more of witness testimony about 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, Alander found that Pan — a 31-year-old former MIT artificial intelligence researcher — more likely than not committed the crime.
That doesn’t mean that Pan has been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Rather, the judge’s ruling at the end of Tuesday’s probable cause pre-trial hearing means that state prosecutors can continue on with the criminal case and eventually try Pan on that murder charge before a jury. All the while, Pan — who was arrested in May 2021 in Montgomery, Ala. following a three-month, nationwide manhunt — remains incarcerated on $20 million bond.
The discovery of Jiang’s DNA in blood stuck to the gearshift of an SUV driven by Pan the night of the murder appeared to play a key role in convincing the judge that this case should continue. So too did the discovery of the threading of Jiang’s skin tissue into a winter hat worn by Pan that same night.
While the first day of the probable cause hearing saw a tow truck driver and two police officers and a scrapyard security guard and a murder eyewitness take the stand to describe what they saw and heard in the aftermath of Jiang’s killing, Tuesday focused in on more material evidence.
A local cop and two state forensic scientists testified in Courtroom 5A at the state courthouse at 235 Church St. about the discovery of blood, gun shot residue, and DNA relating to that crime.
That evidence, paired with witness testimonies from the previous day, prompted Alander to declare that he believes probable cause exists to advance Pan to trial by jury.
New Haven Detective David Parker assesses photos of cars involved in the crime scene, noticing that a dent left in the back of Jiang's Prius matched the scale of the license plate linked to the SUV supposedly stolen by Pan.
Now it will be up to a jury to decide not just whether or not Pan likely committed the crime, but instead whether or not he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Kevin Jiang’s parents, Mincheng Jiang and Linda Liu, heralded the outcome of Tuesday’s hearing as the rightful decision in a nearly two-year-long process to find Jiang’s killer.
“This should be the result,” Jiang’s father said Tuesday afternoon. “The evidence is clear,” he stated, adding this his family has “no doubt” that Pan is guilty.
“We’ve been waiting so long,” Jiang’s mother sighed, expressing gratitude for the judge’s ruling after a series of delays in the case — such as a competency examination that ultimately found Pan capable of assisting in his own defense — that she said has made it difficult to focus on mourning the loss of her son as she seeks justice and answers.
"The State Has Met Its Burden Of Proof"
Steven Bryant scans various DNA reports while fielding questions from two sets of attorneys.
Supervisory Assistant State’s Attorney Stacey Miranda and Assistant State’s Attorney Kelly Davis called an additional three witnesses to the stand Tuesday morning in an effort to convince the judge that Pan more likely than not committed the murder he’s been charged with. Defense attorney Kevin Smith, with colleague Norm Pattis standing beside him for half of the day’s hearing, cross-examined each of those witnesses.
All three of the people called to the stand on Tuesday are crime scene experts. They included a New Haven detective and two state forensic scientists who spoke to the scientific strategies that helped link Pan to Jiang’s death.
Following testimony from New Haven Det. David Parker, who responded to February’s crime scene and observed Jiang’s autopsy, state forensic science examiner Allison Gingell answered questions concerning her studies of gun shot residue found on relevant evidence. Her colleague David Bryant subsequently testified to reports of trace DNA attributed to Jiang, Pan and other unidentified individuals on those same items.
That slate of referenced evidence included the inside of an SUV allegedly stolen by and driven by Pan, a set of detached fuses from that same car, a black leather Dell briefcase seen in Pan’s possession by North Haven police that same night, and a jacket and hat supposedly belonging to Pan.
Forensic examiner Allison Gingell reports on gun shot residue found on relevant evidence.
Gingell reported on Tuesday having found gun shot residue on the ceiling of the SUV driven by Pan as well as on a yellow jacket that had been discovered alongside other evidence supposedly left by Pan near an Arby’s restaurant next to a Best Western hotel in North Haven.
That jacket was found alongside the black bag and a winter hat. Bryant confirmed that the jacket with gun shot residue tested positive for trace DNA that was “100 billion times more likely to belong to Pan than another individual.” He said that DNA was also discovered on that same jacket suggesting two other individuals had touched or worn the coat. Bryant said the state does not know whose DNA that could be.
He also found Pan’s DNA on the inside of a hat, the outside of which contained a “reddish brown” piece of skin tissue that tested positive for containing Jiang’s DNA.
Jiang’s DNA was also found in blood staining the gear shift of the SUV in question, while Pan’s DNA was found alongside at least two others’ DNA on a couple of fuses stuffed into a pocket of the SUV.
New Haven Det. David Parker said during his testimony that he discovered those fuses early on in the investigation — and that when he reinstalled them to their proper places in the car, it reinstated a GPS system and radio that someone had previously dismantled.
Smith, Pattis and Pan talk right before a lunch recess.
In her closing arguments before the judge, Miranda said the combination of eyewitness testimony and trace evidence testing meant the state had met its burden of proof that Pan was likely accountable for murdering Jiang.
Pan’s defense attorney, Kevin Smith, meanwhile, contested virtually every piece of evidence cited Tuesday, suggesting that the only thing Judge Alander could reasonably take away from the hearing was that Pan possibly stole a car.
He said the “DNA itself is puzzling,” and that the witnesses “stacked inferences upon inferences” that didn’t prove Pan was guilty. Those that watched the shooting take place only offered generic descriptions of the murderer, he said. He said the fact that multiple sources of DNA were found on the majority of evidence suggested other individuals might have been involved.
“There were a numbers of instances where evidence was not looked for, not tested” or was otherwise unreliable, Smith said. The coat with gunshot residue and Pan’s DNA, he noted, was a poor reason to suspect Pan, considering that no witness had yet to “claim the shooter was wearing a yellow jacket,” and furthermore had suggested the killer was wearing all black that night.
Plus, he said, a gun found alongside Pan’s other belongings had been explicitly disqualified as the murder weapon.
“There is simply nothing to put a gun in his hand… nothing to conclusively show Mr. Pan was the shooter,” he concluded.
Judge Alander: "The state has met its burden of proof."
Judge Alander ultimately sided with the prosecution’s argument. He said the question before him for this probable cause hearing was not whether the state had “proved beyond any reasonable doubt” that Pan murdered Jiang, as they would be expected to during a jury trial. Instead, the key question was whether a murder was committed and whether there was considerable likelihood that Pan might be responsible.
The eyewitnesses, he said, helped ascertain the obvious: That Jiang had been shot by another individual who then abandoned the scene.
The recovery of evidence that investigators were able to link to Pan after he fled to Alabama, thanks to “expert reports,” as Alander referred to Gingell’s and Bryant’s assessments, was enough for Alander to find “the state has met its burden of proof.”
Previous articles about Jiang’s murder and Pan’s arrest.
Courtroom Testimonies Revisit Yale Murder
Yale Murder Suspect Declared“Competent”
Yale Murder Suspect To Receive“Competency Exam“
Yale Murder Case Continued To September
14 Months Later,“Justice Needs To Be Done”
Yale Murder Case Continued Again
Yale Murder Case Continued To February As Pan Seeks Evidence Access
Yale Murder Case Continued To December While Pan Reviews Evidence In Prison Library
Norm Pattis Takes On Yale Murder Case
Judge Keeps Pan’s Bond At $20M
Wrong-Race Dispatch Recording Released
New Details Emerge On Why Cop Let Pan Go
Warrant Ties Pan To Other Local Shootings; North Haven Cops Ran Stolen Plate
Alleged Murderer’s Parents Show Support
Pan’s Bail Set At $20M
Kevin Jiang’s Alleged Murderer Arrested
New Warrant Charges Pan With Murder
$10K Reward Posted For Pan Info
Pain, Shock, Anger, Love Mix At Memorial Service
Car Dealerships Called For Help In Pan Manhunt
Pan Knew Murder Victim’s Fiancee; North Haven Chief Defends Letting Him Go; $5K Reward Posted
MIT AI Researcher Sought For Questioning In Yale Graduate Student’s Murder
Vigil Call:“All Lives Are Sacred”
Murder Cut Short Romance Nurtured In Nature
Murdered Student May Have Been“Targeted”
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