Projo 7 to 7 News Blog

PROVIDENCE -- The state Supreme Court today upheld the murder conviction of Tajendra Patel, who got two consecutive life sentences after a jury found him guilty of hiring a man to kill the manager of a Portsmouth motel.

Authorities believe Tajendra Patel blamed the manager of Founder's Brook Motel and Suites, Sanjeev Patel -- his brother-in-law -- for breaking up his marriage.

The motel owner's son, Jay Patel testified at trial that he saw his father gunned down, that his father pleaded with the man, “Please, don’t do that, sir. Please don’t do that.” He was the only witness who saw the murder.

Sanjeev Patel’s wife, Prena, testified she could hear her husband pleading with the customer and when she entered the office after hearing the shots, she saw her husband covered with blood.

Patel's appeal to the state's highest court argued the judge erred when she admitted an in-court identification of defendant "because the identification procedure was unnecessarily suggestive and because the identification lacked independent reliability," the court's opinion says. The appeal also argued that the judge also erred in admitting a 911 call that was "irrelevant and unfairly prejudicial."

Among its conclusions, the Supreme Court found "no clear error" in allowing the 911 call recording to be part of the trial.

-- projo.com staff writer Michael P. McKinney, with Journal archival reports

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