'What Jennifer Did': Senseless killings can take a toll on lawyers working the cases
Released in April, What Jennifer Did is a Netflix true-crime production recounting the murder of Bich Ha Pan and the attempted murder of her husband, Huei Hann Pan. Authorities were alerted to the crime by the pair’s adult daughter, Jennifer Pan (pictured above). Her frantic 911 call ushers in the documentary. (Image courtesy of Netflix)
It’s a tragedy any time a life is lost. This is especially true in situations in which one family member kills another.
‘What Jennifer Did’—or didn’t—do
Released in April, What Jennifer Did is a Netflix true-crime production recounting the murder of Bich Ha Pan and the attempted murder of her husband, Huei Hann Pan. Authorities were alerted to the crime by the pair’s adult daughter, Jennifer Pan. Her frantic 911 call ushers in the documentary.
According to Jennifer, her parents were shot during a home invasion in a Toronto suburb. The three assailants had her hands behind her back and secured her to a banister, she said, but she was able to call police. York Regional Police arrived in time to save Jennifer’s father, but her mother was lost.
Jennifer was initially considered a victim witness, but as she recounted what occurred, law enforcement became suspicious. Regardless, authorities canvassed the area and obtained surveillance from a neighbor showing three individuals entering the Pan home before eventually leaving in a rush. Still, other aspects of Jennifer’s story didn’t add up.
Law enforcement soon uncovered Jennifer’s connection to a local drug dealer with whom she had a long-term romantic relationship. Upon a second interview, Jennifer revealed she had been living a double life behind her parents’ backs, as they did not approve of the relationship.
Jennifer did not feel that she was living up to her parents’ expectations. She admitted to having her parents drop her off for classes at a university she was never enrolled in. Eventually, she even hired someone to create a fake transcript from the institution.
With authorities already skeptical, things took another turn when Jennifer’s father awoke from a medically induced coma to ask law enforcement to “use your police techniques to find out what Jennifer did.”
The authorities followed through, thoroughly interrogating Jennifer to the point she admitted to setting up the shooting. However, according to Jennifer, she arranged for the killers to enter the home and shoot her. She no longer wanted to live with the stress, shame and disappointment her parents had caused, she claimed, and it was merely a mistake that they were killed instead of her.
Trying to put logic in an illogical situation
When I was a younger attorney defending my first murder case, the gravity of the situation got to me a bit. After all, any homicide necessarily involves a decedent, and any death will be heavily scrutinized by law enforcement. That can create quite a bit of anxiety on multiple levels.
A mentor tried to calm my nerves by negating the danger: “A murder is simply an assault and battery where someone died.” But I’ve never been able to minimize like that.
First, the stakes are higher than any other criminal cause, save for capital offenses. In Oklahoma, there are only three verdicts that can result from a first-degree murder trial: not guilty, life or life without the possibility of parole.
Consequently, all litigants are buckled in and ready to drive.
Second, most murders I’ve dealt with rarely have a logical motive. Sure, some cases are initially charged as murder in the first degree but later shown to be the result of self-defense. However, most times, the death of a human being seems totally unnecessary or at least very avoidable. As such, it’s often impossible to understand why someone would take another’s life.
‘There’s nothing normal about murder’
With all of that in mind, it’s easy to see why murder cases are so challenging. Still, that challenge becomes exponentially more daunting as the unreasonableness of the violence grows. I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that most practitioners view parricide—which refers to the killing of a close family member but is most commonly used to describe children killing parents—pretty near the summit of unreasonable and illogical homicide scenarios.
Due to the nature of that dynamic, parricide cases involving parents and children often garner quite a bit of media attention.
There are parricide cases where battered-child syndrome comes into play, in that the offspring finally snaps and kills a parent after sustaining abuse. Additionally, there are scenarios where the child-defendant deals with some form of mental health that could arguably lead to a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.
However, that is what makes Jennifer Pan’s case so troubling: Neither of those fact patterns apply. While listening to her multiple interviews with authorities, no observable or obvious defect exists. She’s coherent, oriented in space and time, and fluid in her responses to questions. It’s challenging to come away from the documentary thinking anything other than Jennifer Pan, if guilty, killed her parents for no other reason than greed or malevolence.
Convictions and new trials
Although the Pan violence occurred in 2010, the trial didn’t begin until March 2014. It lasted 10 months. At its conclusion, Jennifer, the drug dealer, and the two of the three assailants (the third eventually entered into a plea agreement) were convicted at trial of conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder and first-degree murder. They were sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
However, in 2023, the Court of Appeal for Ontario granted the four a new trial regarding the first-degree murder conviction on grounds that the trial court gave the jury erroneous instructions.
As such, Jennifer and the others will have their chance to argue their innocence to a different jury. So a decade after her mother’s death, it’s still not entirely clear what Jennifer did in that situation, legally speaking.
Adam Banner
Adam R. Banner is the founder and lead attorney of the Oklahoma Legal Group, a criminal defense law firm in Oklahoma City. His practice focuses solely on state and federal criminal defense. He represents the accused against allegations of sex crimes, violent crimes, drug crimes and white-collar crimes.
The study of law isn’t for everyone, yet its practice and procedure seems to permeate pop culture at an increasing rate. This column is about the intersection of law and pop culture in an attempt to separate the real from the ridiculous.
This column reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily the views of the ABA Journal—or the American Bar Association.
