Alan Chin/Insider
- The assistant accused of murdering, beheading tech CEO Fahim Saleh is planning a psych defense.
- Tyrese Haspil hopes to convince a Manhattan jury he suffered from “extreme emotional disturbance.”
- A trial date is not yet set for Haspil, who prosecutors say planned the grisly killing for weeks.
The personal assistant charged in the home-invasion murder and dismemberment of his tech-CEO boss will argue at trial that he was “emotionally disturbed” in the weeks surrounding the grisly killing, it was revealed in court Thursday.
News that Tyrese Haspil, 25, was considering what’s called an “extreme emotional disturbance” defense in the 2020 murder of Fahim Saleh was first revealed by Business Insider in August.
If Haspil can convince a jury he was emotionally disturbed — a tall order given a trove of video and forensic evidence pointing toward weeks of premeditation — he’d face far less prison time.
His current first-degree murder charges carry a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years to life, meaning it would be 20 years before he even saw a parole board.
A successful extreme emotional disturbance defense would reduce the top charge to first-degree manslaughter, which carries a sentence of anywhere from 5 to 25 years.
Fahim Saleh was found dismembered in his New York apartment on July 14, 2020.
REUTERS/Temilade Adelaja
A trial date has not yet been set. But in a hearing Thursday, the lead Manhattan prosecutor, Linda Ford, offered a progress report, saying experts from her office have completed two psychological examinations of Haspil in preparation for fighting his emotional disturbance defense at trial.
Ford told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice April Newbauer that the District Attorney’s experts may need a third, follow-up session with Haspil before a trial date can be set.
“Mr. Haspil may not testify,” his Legal Aid Society lawyer, Sam Roberts, said after court. “But there will be expert testimony as we present a psychological defense of extreme emotional disturbance.”
Manhattan prosecutors allege that Haspil committed intentional, first-degree murder three and a half years ago, by forcing his way into his former boss’s $2.4 million lower Manhattan apartment, then Tasing and stabbing him to death.
Saleh was an entrepreneur and computer programmer who founded Gokada, a ride-sharing app based in Nigeria.
Saleh’s cousin discovered his body in pieces on the floor of his kitchen one day after the murder.
Haspil had been dismembering his ex-boss with a power saw at the time, but briefly left the crime scene to buy a charger when the tool’s battery died, police and prosecutors allege.
Haspil had embezzled $400,000, and hoped to cover up both this theft and the murder by disposing of the body and blaming Saleh’s disappearance on shadowy overseas business associates, officials allege.
Tyrese Haspil, accused in the murder and dismemberment of tech CEO Fahim Saleh, appears in New York Supreme Court in Manhattan.
Alan Chin/Insider
A Business Insider investigation in August detailed key evidence against Haspil, including elevator security footage showing that Saleh’s masked killer Tased him from behind, then returned to the elevator an hour later to vacuum.
Despite this effort, a single tiny identification tag from a Taser was recovered at the scene. The tag’s unique number matched a Taser delivered to Haspil’s Brooklyn address a month before the murder, prosecutors have said in court filings.
New York’s extreme emotional disturbance defense is almost always used when there’s a sudden crime of passion.
But jurors may find that the delivery of the Taser proves Haspil planned the murder at least a month in advance.
In that case, the defense would need to prove that Haspil’s reasoning was disordered over the course of many weeks, culminating in a complex and calculated effort to cover-up the murder.
“The alleged facts are horrific,” Roberts said after court. “But we believe there is mitigation here.”
Haspil remains held without bail, and is due back in court on February 26.