Court mulls if US$20 million bail for Yale murder suspect Qinxuan Pan is too high
- The former MIT researcher is accused of killing graduate student Kevin Jiang, then eluding authorities for three months
- Prosecutors initially asked for bail to be set at US$50 million, saying Pan’s family is wealthy and there was substantial risk that he would flee
The Connecticut Supreme Court on Wednesday grappled with whether a US$20 million bond set for a former researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology accused of killing a Yale graduate student is unconstitutionally high and how state judges should go about setting bail amounts.
Justices heard just under an hour of arguments by a lawyer for Qinxuan Pan and a state prosecutor. The court did not issue an immediate decision.
Pan, 30, is charged with murder in the shooting death of Kevin Jiang on a New Haven street on February 6. He eluded authorities for three months before being arrested in Alabama with US$19,000 in cash, his father’s passport and several cellphones, police said.
Jiang, 26, an Army veteran who grew up in Chicago, was a graduate student at Yale’s School of the Environment. The motive for his killing remains unclear. Pan knew Jiang’s fiancée from when they both attended MIT, but she told police they were just friends, according to court documents.
Prosecutors initially asked for bail to be set at US$50 million, saying Pan’s family is wealthy and there was substantial risk that he would flee if released on bond. A lower court judge ruled Pan was a flight risk and a potential danger to himself and others, and set the US$20 million bail – prompting Pan’s appeal to the Supreme Court.