Jury draw starts in trial of accused meat cleaver killer

BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) - The trial of a man accused of brutally murdering his wife with a meat cleaver in 2017 is set to begin in the coming days.

The jury draw commenced Monday morning and the judge says he anticipates the jurors will be picked by the end of Tuesday.

The trial for Aita Gurung was originally set to start Tuesday, but that’s looking unlikely.

His case is coming to pass after a yearslong legal battle over whether Gurung was insane at the time of the alleged crime.

A psychiatrist ultimately deemed Gurung legally insane.

Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George dropped the charges based on that psych evaluation in 2019. But then the Vermont Attorney General’s Office pursued its own case, arguing the psychiatrist’s conclusion would have been different had a translator been there.

A Nepalese translator has been used at all pretrial hearings and will be present during the trial.

Former federal prosecutor Jerry O’Neill says, in his experience, using a translator during trial always complicates the proceedings.

“That invariably is a slow process with the person who is the defendant asking questions, not really understanding, and the interpreter having to repeat it. It should be literally word for word, but it never quite is,” O’Neill said. “The only way that I have ever seen it to be effective is if the interpreter is skilled and that person can effectively more the process ahead rapidly or as rapidly as it can be done. But there’s nothing in particular that the judge, the defense lawyer or the prosecutor could do to keep the jury’s attention focused.”

O’Neill says prosecutors could use visuals and demonstrations to engage the jurors and compensate for the tedious delays.

He says the interpretation must be as close to verbatim as possible to ensure the trial is fair.

But if Gurung has difficulty understanding the translations, his competency could be called into question, further diminishing the state’s case against him.

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