Naresh Bhatt’s Defense Offers New Theory of Wife’s Death

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Founders of this country fought and died to create the United States, and when they had declared independence and when they had won the Revolutionary War, they fought again to force certain rights into our founding documents, into the Constitution, into the Bill of Rights. They fought those battles because they believed in a government of, by, and for the people. Fundamentally, they wanted to protect the people from their government. I'll say it again, they wanted to protect the people from their government. Think about what the Bill of Rights, which many of us maybe don't think much about after civics in high school, but think about what it does at its core. It enshrines and enshrines protection for the people from their government. Broadly, these protections can be thought of as the four boxes. There's the soap box, where freedom of speech lives. There's the ammo box, which is where the Second Amendment lives. There's the ballot box, where the fundamental right of Americans to choose their own elected representatives through voting. And there's the jury box, where you sit right now. That last box is the last resting place of liberty. The last bulwark and shield between the people and their government. It has been said that the first tool of tyranny, and the last, is imprisonment. The guarantee of a jury trial for people accused of crime, like Mr. Bob, is the last bulwark against tyranny. The world countries largely don't have a Sixth Amendment right to counsel, and the right to jury trials. They don't have a shield of 12 members of the community requiring the government to prove every element of each charge that they choose to place against a citizen, and to prove it beyond reasonable doubt. When we started all of this, six weeks ago now, I said then that you would have an incredibly difficult job. You would have to give up a big chunk of your time, and care, and attention. Listen to stories that one witness called appropriately grotesque. You would have to keep your minds open as you listened to evidence, and not allow your sympathy or your emotion to short-circuit your ability, or your desire, to fulfill your obligations under the law as members of a jury. In my opinion, the hardest part of your job actually begins right now. It is the hardest part of your job because there is enormous pressure on each one of you now. You are probably already feeling it, I guess, and it is pulling you along towards doing the easy thing here. And what is the easy thing that I'm talking about? The easy thing would be to allow your instincts of compassion and empathy to dictate your discussion and your decision-making when you go back to the jury room. The easy thing would be to give in to a gut level need. I think it's very human to place blame somewhere for the pain and the trauma that Manta Koffle's family has endured for the last two-plus years. Pain and trauma that will continue as a result of their loss. And their knowledge of what happened to her body. The easy thing is to give in to your compassion and the basic human need to place blame somewhere for suffering. To allow those gut level instincts to determine how you approach the case in violation of your actual duty under the law. In violation of a duty you promised at the beginning when Mr. Bott chose this jury. To not spend your time discussing guilt or innocence. To not shift the burden of proof off of the Commonwealth and instead to determine only whether the Commonwealth has proven each element of these offenses to you beyond a reasonable doubt. Only to determine if the Commonwealth has ruled out every doubt based on reason that you may have. That is the duty of the jury box and it is a heavy, heavy burden. As you begin deliberations, you cannot be in search of the truth, you must instead be seekers, really inquisitors of doubt. It is what the instructions given to you require and it is in fact the first instruction that you got today. The possibility, indeed even the probability of guilt in the American system of government must be met not with a guilty verdict. Say it again, the possibility, even the probability of guilt in our system of government that we the people chose. It must be met with a not guilty verdict. We are justifiably proud of this legacy that the founders left for us. But in cases like this one, the burden to carry through on that protection, to give it life and to give it meaning, that burden is enormous. It falls on the 12 of you today. I implore you, Mr. Baa implores you, remember the promise you made to seek and look at the doubt as the instructions require of you to do. If a doubt about what happened exists in your mind, based on reason, you must render a verdict of not guilty. And where does that doubt live in this case? I suggest in how Martha Coughley died. But unchallenged evidence about what happened to her after she died. Mr. Baa testified about that. No one contradicted him. And I am sure that the Commonwealth embraces this description because, as they're pointing out, it goes a long way to removing any doubts you might have in your mind about the charges of concealing and defiling a body. They embraced his statements as the gospel truth because it serves their case to do that. He said that he told the truth two weeks after his arrest. And then he gave the same description to you today. Last week. That includes how Martha died. But I would remind you that the intent of the actor in a charge does matter for those charges. You must find beyond a reasonable doubt that the concealment of the concealment of Martha Coughley's body occurred with malice. Again, part of your jury instructions, you can take a look at those when you go back. If you have any reasonable doubt about whether Mr. Baa's mind was under the control of reason at the time he concealed her body, then the Commonwealth has failed the proven element of the offense. They must prove that he acted with malice. And there must be no circumstances or explanation based on reason that would undercut that. Probability is simply not enough. If you have a doubt, for example, based on the, again, uncontroverted testimony of Dr. Rosenfeld that Mr. Baa's actions were consistent with his documented history of PTSD and an associated reaction to seeing the dead body of Malta Coughley, then you must find that the Commonwealth has not met their burden. You are obligated to render a verdict of not guilty if that is the case. If you find that the Commonwealth has failed the rule out, the possibility that Mr. Baa did not plan or prepare or premeditate the death of Malta Coughley, you cannot return a verdict of first-degree murder. If you have a doubt, Mr. Baa defiled Malta Coughley's dead body, that he acted willfully. Again, it's in the jury instructions, you'll have those. If you have a doubt whether Mr. Baa's actions were driven by something other than willfulness, then the Commonwealth has failed to meet its burden and you must return a verdict of not guilty. Again, possibility, even probability, that he acted willfully is simply not enough, according to the laws. And it has been apparent throughout the trial, the Commonwealth has been able to produce no evidence that would directly contradict Mr. Baa's statement statement about what happened on the morning of July 30, 2024. He has told you what he saw and what he did. He is the only witness to how Malta Coughley died. There is no dispute about that. The Commonwealth points to its circumstantial evidence at this point to try to remove every reasonable doubt about how Malta Coughley died. They point to his purchases through the summer of 2024, including the saw in June, and then the food and the cleaning supplies. But they don't mention that all of these were paid for by an entirely trackable credit card, not someone planning the way they're describing it. They point to immigration records and bank records and to communications between Malta Coughley and her family and a few of her friends. Oddly, they try to portray Malta Coughley as a pure victim. But those records, when you get back in the jury room, take a look at them. They show a different, they show something different. They show a woman with agency. Access to money. Again, look in the immigration records. It shows they had joint bank accounts. This bank account in 2024, she opened that because she wanted a different bank account. She didn't want to share a bank account with them anymore. Obviously, the relationship was in a bad place. But she had access to all the money before that. They had joint bank accounts. They had joint insurance. This is a woman with agency, with access to money, with friends, and with a job. Immigration records, as I say, show that she had those access. They show that she had joint credit card accounts, that they both paid off every month. They show that Malta Coughley wasn't isolated and secluded away at home. That's just true. You can see it from the evidence that's been presented. In fact, she video recorded almost every aspect of her life. And a lot of it got posted on TikTok. She spoke to friends and family every day. But even though Malta Coughley was a prolific producer, a producer of photos and video, the Commonwealth has to rely on a single supposed example of Malta documenting an injury she received in December of 2023. They lean heavily on this photo and the video because it's the only visual documentation of an actual, of their theory of an actual injury that Mr. Bott theoretically abused Malta Coughley. So a woman by all accounts who, of numerous people really, documented literally everything. Both mundane and serious. There's only one supposed incident documented of what is claimed to be persistent abuse. Pay attention to the source of the allegations of abuse, by the way, when you go back. It comes solely, I think you'll find, from people who were friends or blood relatives of Malta Coughley, members of the Nepali community. And most important, those people only heard it from Malta herself. From Malta who undisputedly was worried that her husband was seeking a divorce. Malta who was herself deeply unhappy, as you've heard from people. Who worried that her husband, I'm sorry, deeply unhappy. And I would suggest most likely with something like postpartum depression. And she was facing pressure from her family and other community members to stay in her marriage. Malta who, according to her own brother, was being boxed in and being told to change herself and stay in that marriage. The people to whom she complained about her husband were people who had already taken sides. People who had admitted they didn't like Naresh Vah. And who were committed to believing essentially anything Malta Coughley told them. I point that out to you just so that you think about the filter through which that particular information is coming to you. And that documentation is from images taken in December 2023, shared in February 2024 with a friend and a brother. That in itself should raise doubt for you. If there was persistent abuse, how did she not document it over all of this time that the Commonwealth wants you to believe that it was happening? How is there not more that the Commonwealth could offer to you to remove your doubt? This was more frequent. How is it the only timeframe these images are shared? So the Commonwealth also points to Mr. Bott's messages and Google searches. And while they are suggested when taken out of context, when looking back at them across time, I would suggest they don't paint a clear picture or tell a clear story. The Commonwealth offers you a small handful of searches and Mr. Bott's provided context for many of them. For others, he said quite candidly that he has no idea, no memory. It's unchallenged that those few Google searches are a fraction of a percentage of the vast number of searches that Mr. Bott conducted. The Commonwealth has an offer to contextualize those for you beyond offering dates, but even then for only some of them. They have not met their burden here to remove any reasonable doubt about what those searches might mean. [00:17:50] Speaker ?: Context matters. [00:17:51] Speaker 1: Context matters. It matters so much. Think about the things you search when you're watching TV or reading a book. Context matters and you don't have that for most of the searches that the Commonwealth relies on to dispell doubt. And the chat messages between Mopta Koffle and Naresh Bhatt and between Naresh and the basement tenants, they show a couple in December 2023 and February 2024 in a bad place. Being hurtful to each other, talking about divorce, a marriage beginning to unravel. What they don't do is remove any doubt about what is happening here, about whether Mopta Koffle and Naresh Bhatt's marriage is having trouble or whether there are serious mental health problems becoming evident on one side or maybe both sides of the relationship or whether something else is happening. And that's where doubt lies. There are many witnesses whose testimony don't help you here, I would suggest. A lot of the law enforcement officers who did a great job collecting evidence, you already know what happened in that bathroom and what happened in the garage. Akash Raj, I would suggest, is inherently incredible and has nothing to do with this. There is so much here that is unclear and there's so much that the Commonwealth has failed to prove. They must rule out every doubt you have about the relationship between Mopta Koffle and Naresh Bhatt, based on your sound reason. If they're going to rely on the claim that they have removed doubt about whether Naresh Bhatt killed his wife. Speculation, even probability, is simply not enough under the law. And in what other areas has the Commonwealth failed to prove that Mr. Bhatt caused the death of his wife? They have failed to show that the stain on the carpet, which they rolled out with such a flourish during the trial, was not made by the mixture of vomit, oils, food, pills, blood that Mr. Bhatt saw when he found Mopta Koffle dead on the bedroom floor. Many hours after she'd gone to bed. The experts say that the staining is consistent with that, in addition to other possible causes. Her own expert said that ingesting cell phones is a common method of suicide in Nepal. She agrees that after hours it would be likely be metabolized and it could have resulted in a whole lot of internal bleeding. There actually said that. The Commonwealth has not ruled out this as the physical, as the reason for the physical evidence that they showed you. They haven't ruled out that that description of Mopta's death is exactly what happened. And reasonable doubt lives there. Contrary to everything we know about suicide, the Commonwealth wants to say that people with a future, with a child, wouldn't commit suicide. That's just a fantasy. That's an extraordinary tragedy. But it is indiscriminate in who it claims. [00:21:40] Speaker ?: Friends. Family members. [00:21:44] Speaker 1: Wives. Daughters. The fact of it. It coming. That's a tragedy for everyone who's experienced that. No one was there but Mr. Vot. And that is also undisputed. His description of what he did and how he did it was brutal. It was grotesque. But it was also detailed and consistent. He admitted that he lied to the police and family and friends after Mopta's death. But he also told you that that lie persisted for only two weeks after he was arrested. That is uncontroverted. His story to you over three days of testimony did not change. The Commonwealth has to rule out every reasonable doubt about what happened. But Mr. Vot's description can be a source of that doubt. His responsibility is simply not enough. Turning again to your job today. Your duty under the Constitution. It is fundamental that the protections of a jury trial are for the person the government has accused. Juries are not truth-seeking tools. They are doubt-seeking tools. You must hold the government accountable to carry their burden in order to take away the liberty of one of our fellow citizens. The pressure, as I said in the beginning, will be intense to do something else. To make a statement. To express repulsion at the defilement of Manta Coffley's body. To express compassion and sympathy for her mother and her brother and her daughter. That is not and has never been why our founders fought and died to create a bill of rights. They fought and died to provide a shield. To require the highest burden of proof in our court system before someone's liberty can be stripped from them. That is a requirement that the government remove every doubt based on reason that you have that Mr. Vot committed the offenses they have accused him of. They must remove every doubt based on reason that Mr. Vot had the mental state of malice. Or willfulness in the case of concealment to commit the offenses they have accused him of. They must rule out every doubt based on reason that you have about how Manta Coffley died. Please. Go back and consider whether the Commonwealth has met their burden. Suspicion has never been enough in this country. Probability even has never been enough. You must no longer have doubts, big or small, as long as they are based on your sound judgment. Doubts are still there. I ask that you find the Commonwealth has failed to meet its burden on these charges and that you return them out. Thank you for your service.