Yandamuri has bipolar disorder, says forensic psychologist.
By The American Bazaar Staff
NEW YORK: The convicted murderer Raghunandan Yandamuri’s fate is still being decided by the jury in Pennsylvania, for the dastardly murders of 10-month-old Saanvi Venna and her grandmother Satyavathi Venna, 61, two years ago. There are only two options: the death penalty or life in prison, without parole.
Yandamuri, 28, who represented himself and proclaimed innocence throughout the trial despite confessing early on to the police to the murders on video tape, while his court-appointed lawyer looked on from the sidelines – which ended in the jury finding him guilty of both the first-degree murders in King of Prussia – gave another surprise by appealing to the judge to give him the death penalty.
Prosecutors said Yandamuri, a former information technology worker who immigrated from India on a H-1B work visa, plotted to kidnap the child for ransom money to feed his gambling problem and killed the grandmother when she got in his way.
Read a previous story: http://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2014/10/09/raghunandan-yandamuri-found-guilty-murders-saanvi-venna-satyavathi-venna/
After his conviction, Yandamuri told Common Pleas Court Judge Steven T. O’Neill he wanted the death penalty, reported the Inquirer. But, after speaking with his lawyer, Yandamuri later agreed to abide by the decision of the jury.
Whether that was yet another case of grandstanding like he did during the trial, blaming two unidentified men for the murders, while all the evidence pointed to his cowardly planning and executing the murders, cannot be ascertained.
The jury reconvened on Tuesday for the sentencing phase. They heard the last of the testimony in the penalty phase in the morning. They will hear closing argument this
The Inquirer also reported that Yandamuri also exhibits signs of severe mental illness, including elements of bipolar disorder that impair his judgment, according to a forensic psychologist, who testified on the murderer’s behalf.
Yandamuri has a high IQ of about 120, estimated Gerald Cooke, who spent at least nine hours with Yandamuri and administered a battery of tests and evaluations. But he has suffered from psychotic and depressive episodes, he said, displays grandiosity and tends to deny or minimize his own problems.
Cooke was the last to testify on behalf of Yandamuri in his sentencing hearing.
Main Line reported that jurors wept on Friday as Venkata Venna, the father of Saanvi Venna and the son of Satyavathi Venna, said he’ll never forget the moment he found his mother’s body in his Upper Merion apartment on October 22, 2012, and realized his only child was missing.
“I’ll never forget that moment in my life,” Venna aid, crying. “It shouldn’t happen to anyone.”
Venna told the jury that if not for the outpouring of support from family, friends and even people he’s never met from all over the world, he doesn’t know how he could continue going through life.
“I don’t know how I’m living, how I’m working,” he said. “I want to thank so many people in the world who supported me. Thanks for the humanity.”
Read a previous story: http://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2014/10/09/deliver-death-penalty-raghunandan-yandamuri/
However, he stated that he used to be a trusting person, but is now scared about whom he opens the door for, and, rather than looking for the good, he just sees the bad in people.
Prosecutors also introduced a letter from Chenchu Latha, Saanvi’s mother, who was not in court on Friday, which said Satyavathi Venna, her mother-in-law, always treated her like a daughter and that she is now “missing her daughter and her mother-in-law in this life.”