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Appeal Process Set For Daughter-Killer

A P Kamath in Seattle

Harminder Singh Virk prays for many hours each day -- there are times he holds the Guru Granth Sahib close to his chest, and wishes his daughter is in a peaceful place. The moment he stops praying he starts "hearing voices," says Michael Maxwell, his lawyer, who fought in vain to convince the jury that Virk had committed the unspeakable crime during a spell of temporary insanity. "And when he hears voices, he becomes a very difficult person to manage," the lawyer adds.

Fiftyseven-year-old Virk is among the over hundred inmates in a medium security prison in Kent on the outskirts of this city. He is perhaps alone among the inmates to be without a friend or a single person who is prepared to call him a family member.

For Virk, who shot his 18-year-old daughter Ranjit Kaur Virk when she "curled her lip" at him, has been abandoned by his family and the community, says his lawyer who expects an appeal process be started this month. Maxwell hopes Virk is committed to a facility where he will get serious and continuous psychiatric attention.

"If he continues to be neglected in the state he is, I wonder how long he will last," says the lawyer. "Depression is a very big and quick killer."

Virk, who killed his daughter about a year ago, was held in the jail in lieu of a $ 1 million bond; he was sentenced to a 25-year term last month.

"Who would have paid $ 1 million to have him released?" Maxwell, a court appointed attorney who defended Virk along with Brad Meryhew, asks. The Sikh community never came forward to help Virk in any way, Maxwell says. "For the community he was an outcast because he had committed this horrible crime," he adds. "They did not want to be known in the larger community to have anything to do with this man or his family." There are over 100,000 Sikhs in Vancouver, about two hours' drive from Seattle. None of Virk's children offered to help him get a lawyer.

"Here was a man whose immigration dream has been doomed for many years," Maxwell continues. "His three grown up children had left him to find jobs in other states. He wanted them to be part of his construction business but apparently they did not want to do anything with him. He was deeply shocked by what he called their betrayal. And his mother, who has been ill for many years, wanted to go back to India. And so did Virk. But suddenly everything goes berserk; he shoots and kills his daughter."

Minutes after killing his daughter, Virk left behind his hysterical wife and drove to a nearby police precinct and coolly told the officers that he did what he had to do. The prosecutors would use that announcement a year later to argue that Virk was well aware of what he had done -- and even sought to justify the killing.

His wife left him soon after he surrendered to the police and has been living with their older daughter in New York City. "The day he killed his daughter, he was a dead person to his own wife - and everyone else in the family," the lawyer says.

Virk, who has been in America for about eight years, was in $ 30,000 debt when he killed his daughter, according to his lawyers. His contracting business had failed. "Even when the business was going, he was not making much money," Maxwell adds. Virk had no plan to kill the daughter, his lawyers had hopelessly argued in the court. He got the gun out to threaten her when he saw her lying down on a sofa. He wanted her to prepare for a driver's licence exam.

But when she curled her lip, something snapped deep within Virk; he lost all control and shot his girl, the lawyers said.

Virk's wife had no idea he had a gun and how long he had been hiding it, according to his lawyers. There was speculation that he was hiding the gun to take his own life, in case he could not find raise money to return to India.

The defense argument did not impress the prosecutors and the jury. Officials are skeptical of the verdict being reversed.

Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Gary Ernsdorff had successfully argued before the jury that Virk shot his daughter twice in the face at close range. Virk then reloaded and fired five more times. It was a premeditated crime, Ernsdorff said, because Virk had reloaded his gun. In the appeal case, Virk's lawyer may question such arguments more vigorously.

But Maxwell and his colleague won't represent Virk. "He will have to get new court appointed lawyers," Maxwell explains. "It is in his interest that we won't represent him. For his new lawyer may want to approach the appeal differently than what my colleague and I did. The new lawyer may even argue that we did not represent Virk effectively."

"But we still believe that Virk lost his mind temporarily and committed the horrible murder," Maxwell says. "He belongs to a psychiatric ward."

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