Attorney Pattis and defendant Pan in court in September.
The state has deemed Qinxuan Pan “competent” to stand trial for allegedly murdering Yale graduate student Kevin Jiang — meaning that the former MIT artificial intelligence researcher’s ongoing criminal case will continue.
That was the outcome of a brief hearing Monday morning that was held in a sixth floor courtroom at the state court building at 235 Church St.
The hearing took place two months after Pan’s attorney, Norm Pattis, filed a last minute request for his client to undergo a “competency exam” on the grounds that he may not be mentally fit to stand trial. Monday’s hearing also took place 21 months after Pan allegedly shot and killed 26-year-old Yale grad student Kevin Jiang near Jiang’s fiancee’s apartment on Lawrence Street in East Rock on Feb. 6, 2021. U.S. Marshals later arrested Pan on May 13 of that year in Montgomery, Ala., after a three-month, nationwide manhunt.
On Monday, state Superior Court Judge Gerald Harmon addressed the findings of a sealed medical report, filed by state-hired psychiatrists and social workers on Nov. 2.
Harmon said that the competency exam showed that Pan is able to assist in his own defense and understand the proceedings against him.
“We’ll accept it at face value,” Pattis said of the report on Monday. He stated that the test “unambiguously cites its reasons” for concluding that Pan is competent to stand trial.
The judge said that Pan and his defense will return to court Dec. 5 for a probable cause trial scheduled to run through Dec. 9.
