Murder or manslaughter? The fate of Bhogal now depends on the jury

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Eight weeks after being chosen to serve on the jury of their peers, 12 local citizens were abducted Monday afternoon to begin deliberations to determine the guilt or innocence of Jitesh Bhogal, charged with sexual assault and murder in the first degree in the Autumn’s murder in 2018. Taggart at his home.

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In closing arguments before Superior Court Judge Renee Pomerance’s final instructions to the jury, defense attorney Peter Thorning urged jurors to find his client innocent of the murder charge. “Sir. Bhogal is guilty of murder, no more, no less.”

Thorning said evidence presented during the trial showed that his client was “extremely intoxicated” or in a state of cocaine-induced psychosis when he “scaled the wall” outside Taggart’s apartment building in West Windsor, entered his unit and then confronted the occupant in his room. Bhogal, he said, had mistaken her for a drug addict who had just ripped him off in the parking lot outside.

“I was very wrong,” Thorning said of his client. When Taggart screamed, he kept his mouth shut. His death was “accidental,” Bhogal himself declared earlier during the trial.

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“Do not believe Mr. Bhogal’s evidence,” said Deputy Crown Prosecutor Kim Bertholet during the prosecution’s closing arguments. The testimony of the only other person in the bedroom at the time, Bertholet said, was “inherently contradictory,” selfish, “and ultimately unbelievable.”

Contrary to Bhogal’s explanation, Bertholet said the engineer was “determined, angry” and acted with purpose and intention in the early hours of June 10, 2018: “He knew exactly what he was doing.”

Taggart, 31, whose young son testified that he was in the next room and heard his mother screaming, was a complete stranger to the defendant. Bhogal, 27 at the time, claimed not to remember what he was doing in his room that night or how he got there or how he left.

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Both the Crown and the defense theory are that he thought he had entered the apartment of a drug dealer who had just ripped him off with a quantity of cocaine. The defense story is that Bhogal accidentally killed Taggart trying to stop her screaming, while the Crown argues that he killed Taggart to “cover up his crime” and prevent her from going to the police.

In his own two-hour instruction to the jury, Pomerance said the trial had established that Bhogal had committed an illegal act by assaulting Taggart and that it had caused the woman’s death.

What remained was to determine whether Bhogal intended to murder, either with the intention of causing his death or inflicting bodily harm that he knew would likely cause his death. That would be murder in the second degree. The jury also has to determine whether the Crown has proven beyond a reasonable doubt the prosecution’s argument that Bhogal also committed a sexual assault, making it a first degree murder.

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“Use your good common sense,” the judge instructed the jury, which must reach a unanimous decision. At the very least, Bhogal faces a conviction for involuntary manslaughter, but being convicted of murder means an automatic life in prison.

The jury, which heard dozens of witnesses and was featured in hundreds of exhibits, began its secret deliberations at 5 p.m. Monday.

The defense argued that the encounter was “completely random” and occurred after the consumption of “large amounts of cocaine.” Bhogal, Thorning said, put his hand over Taggart’s mouth and nose until she stopped screaming. He then performed CPR in an attempt to revive her.

The Crown cited the testimony of a pathologist: It would have taken Taggart about 30 seconds to lose consciousness and three to five minutes to die while his breathing was restricted. Bertholet argued that Bhogal’s testimony was “a series of selfish explanations and convenient gaps in memory.”

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