Judge rejects former Mobile neurosurgeon’s bid for new trial

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - Former neurosurgeon Jonathan Pishoi Nakhla, convicted of reckless murder in the traffic death of a 24-year-old medical student, will not get a new trial.

Attorneys for Nakhla, 38, had challenged the residency of one of the jurors who found the defendant guilty in March. But Mobile County Presiding Circuit Judge Wesley Pipes determined that the juror was, in fact, a Mobile County resident. He relied on the juror’s testimony about her intention after her marriage to a Baldwin County woman failed several years ago.

“This determination is based largely on her testimony of her intent to move back to her father’s house following her separation and her testimony that she considered herself a Mobile County resident,” he wrote.

Mobile County District Attorney Keith Blackwood praised the ruling.

“I am pleased that Judge Pipes denied the motion for a new trial for Jonathan Nakhla,” he said in a prepared statement. ‘Our Assistant District Attorneys, Trial Coordinators, Investigators and many other members of the DA Team worked tirelessly on this case that ultimately earned a unanimous guilty verdict. Jurors are a fundamental part of the judicial process and their service should be commended.”

Defense attorney Dennis Knizley said Nakhla would take his case to a higher court.

“Of course, we’re very disappointed,” he told FOX10 News. “However, we intend to raise the issue again on appeal.”

According to testimony at Nakhla’s trial, he was drunk past the legal driving limit and traveling 138 mph seconds before losing control of his Audi R8 Spyder convertible on the Interstate 65 Service Road in August 2020. The car flipped several times, striking a guardrail and landing upside down in a ditch. Samantha Thomas, a student at the University of South Alabama medical school, died instantly.

Mobile County Circuit Judge Ben Brooks sentenced Nakhla to 25 years in prison.

Defense lawyers asked Pipes to set aside Nakhla’s conviction based on their contention that juror Melinda Pate lived in Baldwin County, making her legally ineligible to serve on the panel. They argued that the law required the judge either to find Nakhla not guilty or grant him a new trial.

But Pate testified that while she often slept in Baldwin County, she considered her primary residence to be her father’s house in Mobile.

The Mobile County District Attorney’s Office backed that account and argued that even if Pate were not a valid juror, the defense needed to demonstrate that it impacted the trial. Prosecutors also argued that the defense gave up its right to raise the issue because it did not do so during jury selection.

Pipes wrote that Pate, unlike the juror in a precedent cited by the defense, had no reason to lie about her residency.

“This weight is bolstered by her candid admission that she moved from Mobile County to Baldwin County on March 8 of this year and actually changed her residence to Baldwin County on that date,” he wrote.

The judge also ruled that he would have sided with the prosecution even if the defense had shown her to be a Baldwin resident because it did not demonstrate that it harmed Nakhla.

Nakhla’s lawyers raised other issues, such as Brooks’ refusal during the trial to declare a mistrial over the prosecution’s failure to turn over surveillance footage from a motel on the service road. Prosecutors said at the time that they did not realize until after the trial started that there was video from inside the motel that Mobile police gathered. They argued it did not contain anything relevant and that the defense long before that received surveillance footage showing a view outside the motel.

While Brooks allowed the trial to go on, it did pause testimony for two days to give the defense time to review the newly obtained video evidence.

Other objections include the trial judge’s decision to allow testimony from someone who previously had been a passenger in Nakhla’s car, a disagreement over the instructions given to jurors before deliberations, challenges to the state’s expert witness testimony,

But Pipes sided with the District Attorney’s Office on those issues, as well.

Updated at 3:58 p.m. with reaction form the prosecution and defense.