No new trials for men convicted of human smuggling in death of family at Manitoba-U.S. border: judge

Steve Karnowski · The Associated Press

· Posted: Apr 08, 2025 4:00 PM EDT | Last Updated: 8 minutes ago

A U.S. national justice connected Tuesday rejected requests for caller trials for 2 men convicted connected quality smuggling charges successful the deaths of 4 members of a household from India who froze to decease portion trying to transverse the Canadian borderline into Minnesota during a blizzard successful 2022.

U.S. District Judge John Tunheim declined to acceptable speech the blameworthy verdicts that a assemblage returned past November against Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel and Steve Anthony Shand.

His bid clears the mode for the 2 defendants to instrumentality their cases to a national appeals tribunal aft helium sentences them connected May 7.

Attorneys for some men argued that the grounds was insufficient.

"But this was not a adjacent case," Tunheim countered. 

The justice recovered that determination was capable grounds for the assemblage to find some Shand and Patel blameworthy connected each 4 counts.

He said the nonaccomplishment of prosecutors until precocious successful the proceedings to disclose a anterior disciplinary enactment against a Border Patrol cause who testified, portion troubling, had a minimal interaction connected the wide case. He besides stood by his determination to effort the defendants unneurotic alternatively than separately.

Prosecutors said during the proceedings that Patel, an Indian nationalist who prosecutors accidental went by the alias "Dirty Harry," and Shand, an American from Florida, were portion of a blase amerciable cognition that brought expanding numbers of Indians into the U.S.

They said the victims — 39-year-old Jagdish Patel; his wife, Vaishaliben, who was successful her mid-30s; their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi; and three-year-old son, Dharmik — froze to decease conscionable northbound of the borderline betwixt Manitoba and Minnesota connected Jan. 19, 2022.

The household was from Dingucha, a colony successful the occidental Indian authorities of Gujarat. The mates were schoolteachers, section quality reports said.

Seven different members of their radical survived the ft crossing.

Patel is simply a communal Indian surname, and the victims were not related to the defendant.

The astir superior counts transportation maximum sentences of up to 20 years successful prison. But national sentencing guidelines trust connected analyzable formulas, and prosecutors person not yet said what they volition urge for sentences.