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His fear of the North Korean nuclear bomb caused one death. But they have overturned his sentence

2021-02-05T18:55:11.732Z


This wealthy stockbroker was convicted of “murder with a depraved heart” after a horrific incident in a bunker in Washington DC, but the evidence did not support the charge.


Daniel Beckwitt, a 29-year-old wealthy stockbroker, was obsessed with a possible

North Korean nuclear attack

, so he hired 21-year-old Askia Khafra to excavate a

bunker

under a house located in a posh suburb of Washington DC

In September 2017, while Khafra was working inside the underground facility, an electrical failure caused a fire that ended his life.

Firefighters found his body completely charred and

 unrecognizable.

A jury found

Beckwitt

guilty of

second-degree murder with a "depraved heart"

and manslaughter in 2019 for the young man's death and sentenced him to

nine years in prison.

But 

a Maryland appeals court last week overturned Beckwitt's conviction.

A three-judge panel ruled that

the evidence was insufficient

to support Beckwitt's murder conviction, although it upheld his conviction for

gross negligence

manslaughter

.

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"We always felt like this case was overloaded from the beginning," said Megan Coleman, one of Beckwitt's attorneys.

The man, who has been incarcerated since his conviction in April 2019,

will be sentenced again

after the appeal process is final, as prosecutors can still appeal to the state Supreme Court.

Meanwhile he will remain in prison in Hagerstown,

serving his sentence.

His attorney said the guidelines for this case would recommend a sentence of between six months to five years in jail for involuntary manslaughter.

Ramon Korionoff, a spokesman for Montgomery County State Attorney John McCarthy, said prosecutors were reviewing the ruling. 

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A sophisticated deception

Khafra, described by friends and family as ambitious, brilliant and naive, and Beckwitt, described as a skilled computer scientist, met through a

chat for entrepreneurs and investors.

Khafra wanted to launch a company - Equity Shark - in which Beckwitt invested $ 10,000.

Dia Khafra, Askia Khafra's father, poses with a photo of his son at his home in Silver Springs, Maryland.

But it did not take off and Khafra needed to return the money somehow, the appellate judges wrote, so he

agreed to dig the bunker tunnels.

Beckwitt had been planning this project since 2014 and tried by all means to keep it top

secret

because he did not want his shelter to be filled with strangers in case the bombs started falling, according to evidence from the trial.

He did everything he could to confuse Khafra:

he made him put on opaque glasses

and walked him on a long drive to make him think they were digging the tunnels in Virginia and not Maryland.

Khafra carried a cell phone with him while digging a cell phone in the tunnels, but Beckwitt used a technology trap to make believe they were digging in Virginia.

For days,

Khafra made a life inside the future bunker

: he worked there, ate there, and urinated and defecated in a bucket that Beckwitt brought him down.

The site was illuminated and had a system to circulate the air and a heater.

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A hole in the cement floor of the basement led to a shaft that descended 20 feet (6 meters) to tunnels that branched out about 200 feet (60 meters) in length.

Investigators concluded that the fire that killed Khafra was caused by a faulty electrical outlet in the basement.

Beckwitt ignored the obvious danger signs and sacrificed security for secrecy, according to prosecutors.

Defense attorney Robert Bonsib, for his part, told jurors that the fire was an accident, not a crime, and described his client as an "idiosyncratic man" but "incredibly brilliant" who never intended to do hurt.

Murder "with a depraved heart"

The appellate court ruling says murder with a depraved heart requires "

extreme disregard

for the value of human life."

It must be shown that the person committed the murder deliberately.

Killing someone in this manner is considered by most states - including Maryland - to be a form of second degree murder, while

grossly negligent

manslaughter

requires only "a wanton and reckless disregard for human life."

The first is punishable by up to 30 years in prison;

the other with up to 10 years.

The panel said Khafra would not have died if Beckwitt had not arranged for him to work in a dangerous environment.

But the judges noted that prosecutors did not present evidence that the tunnels themselves were structurally unsafe.

"To be sure, he intentionally concealed the location of the tunnels from Khafra and responded apathetically to the power failures on the day of the fire, but we cannot conclude that the appellant realized - or should have reasonably realized - that his conduct was likely. , if not sure, of causing death, "says its ruling.

"Consequently,

the evidence was insufficient

to support the conviction for murder with depraved heart," the document added.

Montgomery County Judge Margaret Schweitzer told Beckwitt that her

"intellectual arrogance"

led to the tragedy: "You thought everything would be fine because you were so smart," she said during the sentencing hearing, "you thought you could fix everything."

With information from The Associated Press and The Washington Post.

Source: telemundo

All news articles on 2021-02-05

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