Rashid v. State

The trial court properly admitted a videotape of the defendant's conversation with family members in the police interrogation room, as no reasonable expectation of privacy existed and no evidence established that the police did anything to foster a belief that the conversation was private.

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Chaudhry Rashid appeals his conviction for malice murder in connection with the strangulation death of his daughter, Sandeela Kanwal. Rashid challenges the sufficiency of the evidence of his guilt, grants of immunity to members of his family, the admission into evidence of a videotaped conversation between himself and his family, the use of a transcript of the videotape, and aspects of the trial court’s instructions to the jury. Finding the challenges to be without merit, we affirm.1

Rashid immigrated to the United States from Pakistan following the death of his wife. After he remarried, his four children, including Kanwal, emigrated from Pakistan and began living with him. Upon the insistence of Rashid, in 2005 Kanwal married her first cousin in order to permit the cousin entry into the United States. The cousin arrived in Georgia in 2008, stayed briefly with Rashid and his family, and then moved to Chicago without Kanwal. Kanwal contacted an attorney to seek a divorce. When Kanwal’s family learned of her intention to divorce her cousin, the family “started to force her not to do anything, not to leave the house, not to go and work. Trying to cut her off from everything.” Kanwal and Rashid argued frequently. Kanwal asked a friend to “try and get her out of the house” and to take her to a physician so that she could attempt to convince her father that she was not having any affairs and that she was not pregnant. In a telephone call to the friend, Kanwal confided that Rashid had found out that she filed for divorce, and that she feared her family would “take measures against her,” including poisoning her food.

Rashid v. State

The trial court properly admitted a videotape of the defendant's conversation with family members in the police interrogation room, as no reasonable expectation of privacy existed and no evidence established that the police did anything to foster a belief that the conversation was private.

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