What Jennifer Did: Why is Jennifer Pan getting a retrial?

If you tuned into the new Netflix documentary What Jennifer Did, you might be wondering: why is Jennifer Pan getting a retrial? Here’s everything you need to know. 

American Murder filmmaker Jenny Popplewell is back with her latest documentary film, this time turning her attention to the highly-publicized 2010 case involving a home invasion that left Pan’s mother dead and her father with serious injuries. 

At the time, the only witness police had was Pan herself, but as investigators brought her in for questioning, they soon realized they weren’t dealing with a robbery gone wrong; they were dealing with a sinister plot devised by Pan and her boyfriend, Daniel Wong.

What Jennifer Did ends with a shocking reveal: all of the accused were granted a retrial by the Court of Appeal for Ontario in May 2023 for the first-degree murder of Pan’s mother, Bich Ha Pan. But it doesn’t explain why, so let’s get into it. 

What Jennifer Did: Why is Jennifer Pan getting a retrial?

The court stated that Jennifer Pan and her conspirators – Daniel Wong, Lenford Crawford, and David Mylvaganam – were granted a retrial as the original judge incorrectly presented just two plausible scenarios for the attack, preventing the jury from considering other verdicts such as second-degree murder or manslaughter. 

All four involved were convicted of first-degree murder for Bich and the attempted murder of Pan’s father, Huei Hann Pan. Each of them were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years in 2015, serving concurrent sentences. 

However, according to the Ontario court’s documents, the trial judge, Cary Boswell, was said to have wrongfully offered two scenarios to the jury for the murder of Bich: 1) she was killed deliberately as part of their plan to murder both parents; or 2) the home invasion was planned and she was killed during the robbery.

The court said in its decision: “In this case, the jury might have had a doubt about the planned and deliberate murder of Pan’s mother but be satisfied that the appellants knew that the murder of Pan’s mother was a probable consequence of a plan to kill her father. This could give rise to a conviction for second-degree murder. 

“It was also possible for the jury to have had a doubt about the planned and deliberate murder of Pan’s mother but to have been satisfied that there was a reasonably foreseeable risk of non-trivial bodily harm to Pan’s mother through the implementation of the plan to kill Pan’s father, such that a conviction for manslaughter would arise.”

Stephanie DiGiuseppe and Harshi Mann, two lawyers representing Pan, said in a statement at the time: “Today, in an unanimous decision, the Ontario Court of Appeal overturned Jennifer Pan’s conviction for the first degree murder of her mother and ordered a new trial for her and her co-accused. 

“The Court accepted Ms. Pan’s argument that the trial judge failed to instruct the jury on all available verdicts. The court upheld the conviction for the attempted murder of Ms. Pan’s father. Ms. Pan is considering her options in relation to this aspect of the judgment. Today’s decision is a landmark in the fight to exonerate Ms. Pan.”

It should be noted that the attempted murder charge of Pan’s father has been upheld. But if the Supreme Court of Canada doesn’t order the retrial, the accused can start the process of seeking parole for the attempted murder conviction. The case is ongoing, but we’ll be sure to keep you posted here if and when new details emerge. 

Until then, What Jennifer Did is streaming on Netflix now. You can find more true crime documentaries to watch this month here, and new movies coming to streaming here.