Judge rejects new trials for 2 convicted of human smuggling in death of family of 4 from India WSOC TV [Video]

MINNEAPOLIS — (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday rejected requests for new trials for two men convicted on human smuggling charges in the deaths of four members of a family from India who froze to death while trying to cross the Canadian border into Minnesota during a blizzard in 2022.

U.S. District Judge John Tunheim declined to set aside the guilty verdicts that a jury returned last November against Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel and Steve Anthony Shand. His order clears the way for the two defendants to take their cases to a federal appeals court after he sentences them on May 7.

Attorneys for both men argued that the evidence was insufficient.

“But this was not a close case,” Tunheim countered.

The judge found that there was sufficient evidence for the jury to find both Shand and Patel guilty on all four counts. He said the failure of prosecutors until late in the trial to disclose a prior disciplinary action against a Border Patrol agent who testified, …