Gwinnett County’s longest-pending death penalty prosecution ended Tuesday with a guilty plea from a Vietnamese nail salon owner who gunned down a man and his 2-year-old son over a gambling debt in 2004.
There are now no death penalty cases left on the county’s docket, since two other pending cases have been resolved by defendants entering guilty pleas within the past three months.
Khanh Dinh Phan, 49, of Duluth was sentenced by Superior Court Judge Ronnie K. Batchelor to serve two concurrent life sentences for the Dec. 29, 2004, slayings of his friend Hung Thai, 37, and his 2-year-old son Hugh. Under current parole board rules he could become eligible for parole 30 years from the date of his arrest. By then he’ll be 72 years old.
Phan was such a close family friend that the toddler referred to him as “Uncle Khanh,” said Deputy Chief Assistant District Attorney Lisa Jones. However, police said Phan executed the father and toddler at their split-level home at 1112 Martin Nash Road near Lilburn because he owed thousands of dollars to a bookmaker that Hung Thai was a middleman for.
Hung Thai “took bets and placed them, but the money was paid to someone higher up than him,” Jones said. “There was evidence our victim told Phan he would not take any more of his bets, because he owed too much money.”
Phan also shot Hung Thai’s wife, Hoangoah Ta, in the head that day. But she survived and woke from a seven-week coma to identify Phan as the killer.
Ta was slated to testify against Phan if the case had gone to trial. Jones said Ta, who moved back to her home country of Vietnam after the shooting, still struggles with some physical impairments. However, she can communicate well and provided prosecutors with a recorded statement about her recollection of the shooting.
Hung Thai’s father, Hoang Thai, who lives near Norcross, read a statement before sentencing saying the family wished for the death penalty for Phan, but was thankful the case was finally being resolved, Jones said.
Phan’s trial had been forestalled numerous times over the years because of underfunding in the state capital defender program that resulted in several pretrial appeals. Prosecutors set a deadline of Jan. 28 for Phan to accept the negotiated plea or be prepared to go to trial in the near future and face the possibility of getting the death sentence if convicted, Jones said.
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