SAN JOSE — A man charged with killing both of his parents two years ago and leaving behind a grisly scene with cryptic scrawlings in their bucolic Evergreen home, then taking his brother to an anime convention, will be defending himself when his murder trial begins this month.
Court records show that Hasib Bin Golamrabbi, 24, is no longer being represented by the Santa Clara County Public Defender’s Office and is now pro per. His first trial hearing, expected to be largely procedural, is Tuesday.
Golamrabbi, who declined a recent request for a jail interview with this news organization, is facing an uphill battle by taking on such a task, said David Ball, an associate law professor at Santa Clara University who specializes in criminal procedure. But, he added, the burden is also spread to both the judge and prosecution.
“You have the right to self-representation,” Ball said. “But at the same time, you can expect the judge will do things in order to make sure the defendant gets a fair trial. There are a myriad of things to get done procedurally. And there’s a burden on the prosecution to make sure the defendant got his or her rights respected at trial.”
Deputy District Attorney Carlos Vega, who is prosecuting the case, said his approach won’t be drastically altered with the defendant operating solo across the aisle.
“The people are prepared to prosecute Mr. Golamrabbi and will proceed in the same manner we do in all cases regardless of the manner of representation,” Vega said.
Golamrabbi has been held without bail in the Santa Clara County Main Jail since a few days after the April 24, 2016 killings of Golam Rabbi, 59, and Shamima Rabbi, 57. Their bodies were found a day later at their hillside Evergreen home by friends and relatives who grew worried after not hearing from them.
Not a whole lot of clarity in the killings has surfaced since, and no clear motive has been revealed. But Golamrabbi’s then-17-year-old brother was dismissed from the case after initially being arrested and implicated.
San Jose police investigators allege that Golamrabbi shot his father more than a dozen times in the home’s garage, then as his mother came rushing in, he killed her with one shot to the head.
The case took on a national profile after it was revealed that on the wall and floor near the bodies, someone had scrawled disturbing messages: “Sorry my first kill was clumsy,” and “I can’t be like you telling a lie … I can’t love someone without telling them.”
The younger brother was believed to be in the house, but it was unclear to what extent he saw or heard anything. He was legally cleared and his public defender later said that the brother’s response to the trauma over what happened might have affected his ensuing behavior and gave the impression of guilt. For three days before his arrest, the younger brother attended school without saying a word about the killings.
In a brief jail interview a few days after the killings, Golamrabbi at the time flatly told a news reporter that his younger brother was not involved in the killing, but said nothing more.
Adding confusion to the aftermath of the Rabbis’ deaths was the revelation that Golamrabbi and his brother attended the Kraken Con anime convention in Oakland that same weekend, presumably after the shootings.
Golamrabbi, who attended San Jose State University, was arrested in Tracy after reportedly hiding inside a friend’s closet there for 24 hours, where he purportedly confessed to shooting his father, according to sources familiar with the investigation.
According to a police report, Golamrabbi initially told detectives that he was ordered to shoot his father by an unnamed home intruder, and that someone else shot his mother. The younger brother soon contradicted that account, reportedly saying there was no intruder, and that after the shootings, his brother ordered him to close the house curtains and check the garage door to make sure blood could not be seen from outside. Then they drove to the convention and aroused no suspicion or attracted any attention.
The Rabbis were well respected in the local Bangladeshi and Islamic communities, active at both the Islamic center and with the South Bay Islamic Association. They immigrated to the United States in the 1980s; Golam Rabbi worked as a quality-assurance engineer and Shamima Rabbi, who earned her degree from San Jose State, was an accountant for several large companies.
Golamrabbi faces two counts of murder with aggravated circumstances and firearm enhancements, and if convicted faces a maximum sentence of 25 years to life in prison. Such severity, Ball said, makes the prospect of self-representation a formidable challenge to put it modestly.
“I can tell you lawyering is hard, and murder trials are hard,” Ball said. “I wouldn’t want my first murder trial to be one where my own life is at stake.”
