While those following the killing of a UNC faculty member on Monday are likely months away from learning the fate of suspect, Tailei Qi, one early detail on how Qi will be prosecuted has already been clarified.
Orange County District Attorney Jeff Nieman said after Qi’s formal charging that despite the maximum penalty for first-degree murder being capital punishment, his office will not seek it. The decision is consistent with Nieman’s commitment to not use the death penalty while serving as D.A.
“This isn’t a decision I’ve made specific to this case,” he told Chapelboro. “I look at it like a pledge I made.”
Orange County Assistant District Attorney Jeff Nieman speaks to reporters on November 7, 2022 about the ongoing court case for the murders of Lyric Woods and Devin Clark. Similar to the Tailei Qi case, Nieman said he would not seek the death penalty against the alleged murderer, Issiah Ross.
Residents and followers of Orange County’s court system may know about Nieman’s track record, as it was an element of his campaign for election to the position during the 2022 primaries. He cites how it has traditionally been systemically racist, with more non-white defendants receiving capital punishment than white, and how it can be used as leverage to threaten people. During his campaign, Nieman also told voters he was against it because he believes it is “the only punishment we can’t undo.”
“I made a promise to voters that I would behave a certain way when I was running for office,” Nieman said this week. “I would say just about anybody would agree a fundamental thing they would like out of their leaders is that when [the officials] say they’re going to do something when they get a job, they do it when they get it.”
Still, Nieman’s office will likely seek a severe sentence against Qi, who is accused of arriving to Caudill Labs on UNC’s campus and fatally shooting his academic advisor Zijie Yan before fleeing. Despite several different agencies being involved in the investigation – including the FBI and state authorities – Nieman says there’s no change in how his office will approach the prosecution. Neither does Qi being a Chinese national, who is in the U.S. on a visa according to the district attorney.
Nieman acknowledges, though, the national attention the tragedy has drawn because of it happening at UNC, and how the community is recovering, has raised its profile.
“The only way it changes,” he says, “is that it does add a certain responsibility for me [and] our office to respond to the public’s high level of interest. That’s a separate, external thing – that’s going on, but at the same time, what’s happening in the office is fundamentally the same way we handle every other case.”
Tailei Qi, the graduate student suspected in the fatal shooting of a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty member, center, makes his first appearance at the Orange County Courthouse in Hillsborough, N.C., Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2023. (AP Photo/Hannah Schoenbaum)
The amount of interest around a case, however, does not mean sped up proceedings. Nieman says his office will take the case to a grand jury next week and it could proceed to superior court from there. But beyond that, he says there is no clear timeline of when court proceedings will unfold. Nieman cites an average of a year-and-a-half to two years for murder charges to ultimately receive a ruling in his district.
“Unfortunately, in reality, court cases don’t play out on a timeline that fits with the public’s reasonable desire to learn about the case and follow [it]. What tends to happen… There’s a lot of public attention around when [the crime] happens, and that’s when people want to know a lot. It happens to be the time when we’re least able to provide a lot of information.”
One way Nieman seeks to address the public’s call for updates, though, is by personally taking the case as the lead prosecutor. He says that should allow a direct line of communication on how the case is moving along – which got the stamp of approval from the rest of the D.A. office.
“I did a lot of thinking about it and discussing with my staff,” says Nieman, “and the consensus was this was a case that’d be best [if] I handle directly.”
Meanwhile, UNC honored the slain faculty member — applied physical sciences researcher Zijie Yan — in several ways on Wednesday. The university rang its famed Morehead-Patterson bell tower in Yan’s memory at 1:02 p.m., which is around the time shots were reported being fired on Monday. Additionally, UNC held a candlelight vigil for the broader community and Yan’s family in the Dean Smith Center.
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