Judge denies sentencing delay in Chinese scholar case

Judge denies sentencing delay in Chinese scholar case | iNFOnews.ca
Lifeng Ye, the mother of slain University of Illinois scholar Yingying Zhang, cries out in grief as her husband Ronggao Zhang, far left, addresses the media after a jury found Brendt Christensen guilty of her murder Monday, June 24, 2019 outside the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Peoria, Ill. Consoling her is her son Zhengyang Zhang, far right, and family friend Dr. Kim Tee. (Matt Dayhoff/Journal Star via AP)

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – A judge has denied a request to delay sentencing for a former University of Illinois student convicted in the kidnapping and murder of a visiting Chinese scholar.

The (Champaign) News-Gazette reports U.S. District Judge James Shadid issued the ruling Wednesday.

Jurors last week convicted Brendt Christensen in the 2017 killing of 26-year-old Yingying Zhang. His sentencing begins Monday. Jurors will decide if he’ll receive life in prison or the death penalty.

Christensen’s lawyers argued that prosecutors turned over a large amount of victim impact videos at the last minute. They said it would take weeks to translate the videos from Chinese to English. They asked the judge to either bar them or delay sentencing.

The judge told prosecutors to give defence attorneys specific video clips they plan to use at sentencing.

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