Alpna Patel trial ends in hung jury

Officials said prosecutors would meet on Monday with the court’s administrative judge to discuss a retrial.

Defence attorney Edward Smith Jr said the acquittal on the first degree murder charge did not constitute a partial victory. "There’s no victory in this kind of death," he said.

Alpna, of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, her family and members of her husband’s family all declined to comment.

The defendant told jurors that her 10-month marriage, whichhad been arranged by the couple’s families with their consent, deteriorated because of the interference of her in-laws. She moved into her in-laws’ home in Buffalo, New York, while her husband completed his surgical residency in Maryland.

Alpna said she traveled to Viresh Patel’s Baltimore apartment on March 23, 1999, to discuss their marital problems. She stayed in a Baltimore-area hotel during the day and left for her husband’s apartment only after she was certain he had returned from work.

After the couple talked briefly about their marriage — reaching no conclusions — they went to sleep, she told the jury.

Alpna told police that she awoke in the early hours of March 24 to find her husband leaning over her, holding a black-handled steak knife to her throat. She said he may have received the fatal stab wound to his neck during the resulting struggle.

Prosecutors argued that she went to Viresh Patel’s apartment in the middle of the night to stab him as he slept.

During closing arguments,prosecutor William D McCollum called Alpna a "poor little rich girl" who became upset after she did not get her way in her marriage. McCollum also questioned her description of Viresh Patel lunging at her several times after he was stabbed.

"She says he lunges at her after he’s been stabbed twice in the carotid artery," McCollum said. "The facts in this case will show you that this couldn’t have happened the way she said."

He also questioned whether a woman barely 1.52 meters (5 feet tall) could have bested her 1.8-meter (5 feet, 11 inches tall) husband during the struggle.