Defendant says he framed himself

Man gave a meandering testimony on an elaborate frame-up scheme

SAN JOSE » Hasib bin Golamrabbi, who is representing himself against charges he shot his parents to death, blamed his brother for the slayings and testified that he took the fall to fulfill a promise to hismother that he would always protect his younger sibling.

That was the heart of Golamrabbi’s defense during two days of often meandering testimony that ended Thursday and scrutinized by Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Carlos Vega.

At one point, Vega asked Golamrabbi if he also had planned to kill his brother. At first, the defendant sidestepped Vega’s insinuation, but in another instance, he offered a chilling response in explaining why he couldn’t be the killer.

“If I did (the killings), seeing that I’m the least fond of him, I don’t see any reason why I would spare him,” Golamrabbi said Thursday. “He was the one person in the household I didn’t like.”

Golamrabbi, 24, spent a significant portion of his testimony describing a distant and often strained relationship with his younger brother Omar, who was 17 when Golam Rabbi, 59, and Shamima Rabbi, 57, were slain April 23, 2016 in their Evergreen home. The younger brother was initially arrested as a co- defendant but was later dismissed from the case for lack of evidence.

At the same time, Golamrabbi said his brother trusted him enough to confess in extensive detail to killing their parents as the siblings drove back from an

anime convention in Oakland the morning after the shootings. Golamrabbi said his brother also proposed an elaborate scheme in which Golamrabbi would admit to the crime and say an unnamed, shadowy figure coerced him.

“The conversation you had with him required the ultimate trust, don’t you agree?” Vega asked during his cross- examination.

Golamrabbi is the only witness blaming his brother for their parents’ deaths. No physical evidence or eyewitness testimony has been presented to implicate his brother. In August, the Public Defender’s Office was relieved of representing Golamrabbi, who expressed in jailhouse correspondence that he distrusted his court- appointed attorney. Vega also said in court that the District Attorney’s Office was only made aware of Golamrabbi’s defense two weeks before the jury trial began.

The ethnically diverse jury of nine men and three women could begin deliberating on the case late Friday or early next week.

The defendant characterized his younger brother as a spoiled, entitled, disaffected and sociopathic teen who killed their parents to be free of their strict rules, yet still strong-willed enough to convince Golamrabbi to cover for him.

He also portrayed himself as an obedient son who was tasked with trying to counsel his younger sibling. He stopped several times to gather his composure when speaking about his parents and their struggles with the rebellious teen.

“He would either ignore my attempts or try to rebel against me for trying to keep the family together,” Golamrabbi said.

Golamrabbi described waiting for Omar outside the home the morning of the killings, presumably to take him to the convention, and said his brother eventu- ally emerged fromthe home but was vague and shifty and would later ask general questions about how to mount a legal argument for self- defense. The defendant made no mention of hearing gunshots.

In several instances during his testimony, Golamrabbi struggled to recall other witness accounts and even statements he had recently made during the trial. He dismissed prosecution witnesses, one of whom testified about his confession, as having overactive imaginations.

Time and time again, Golamrabbi said he was simply taking his brother’s suggestion to take the fall for their parents’ killings. He said he parked about a mile from their home the morning they returned from Oakland, ran to the house and discovered his mother’s body. Then following his younger brother’s “suggestions,” wrote crypticmessages throughout the house to convince investigators that an intruder committed the killings.

Among the scrawlings found on the walls and floors near the crime scene were the phrases “Sorrymy first kill was clumsy,” “your (sic) cute when you sleep,” “take care of your broter (sic) or he will be next.”

Vega also pressed Golamrabbi that upon purportedly discovering his mother’s body — the defendant said he never saw his father’s body because he couldn’t get into the locked garage where he was killed — he didn’t call police or an ambulance, or anyone, before deciding “to go in full frame-up mode” and try to blame the shootings on a past unnamed abuser.

“While you were writing on the walls, you made the decision to pin themurders on an innocent person?” Vega asked.

Golamrabbi responded “yes” to that question, and several others where the defendant admitted to lying to San Jose police detectives and other authorities — all to protect his brother.

He added that he ran off and back to his car when someone knocked on the door, and drove away after Omar left and started walking home. Golamrabbi said he made attempts to visit friends in San Francisco, Morgan Hill, and UC Santa Cruz before finally landing in Tracy, where he was arrested several days after the shootings.

Vega steadily questioned the defendant’s logic for staging an alternate crime scene when he could have presented the same false story, purportedly suggested by his brother, to police or family members directly.

“Criminal activity is not my expertise,” Golamrabbi responded. “Whatever I did, there was no logic behind it.”

Vega appeared incredulous at the explanation of howabullet wasfired at the Evergreen home’s chimney by the same .22 caliber rifle used to kill the Rabbis. Expert testimony stated the gun had been fired in the living room, with a pillow used to muffle the sound, sometime after the killings. Vega contended that was an attempt by Golamrabbi to manipulate the crime scene, but the defendant attrib- uted that to a past act by his late father.

“My father thought that was a nasty pillow,” Golamrabbi said, adding that it was in instance of his father’s sometimes childish tendencies.

To which Vega replied, “It is your testimony that your father, Golam Rabbi, took his .22 caliber rifle, sat on that couch, and fired a around that hit the chimney wall … because sometimes he was like a kid?”

The prosecutor later pointed out thatGolamrabbi asked for no detail about his brother’s confession when the defendant cross- examined Omar on Monday.

“You didn’t ask him about any of those details when you had him on the stand,” Vega said. “You go into such detail ( later) because it was you who was killing them.”

Golamrabbi denied the accusation, and reiterated that his kid brother made him do it.

“It wasn’t a good (plan), but he suggested it, so I went with it,” he said. “I did what he told me to do.”

“Itwasn’t a good (plan), but he suggested it, so I wentwith it. I did what he toldme to do.” — Hasib bin Golamrabbi