Doctor Accused of Killing Son Pleads Innocent : Judge Dismisses ‘Special Circumstances’ That Could Lead to Death Penalty

A Hacienda Heights physician accused of strangling and dismembering his 11-year-old son pleaded not guilty in Pomona Municipal Court Wednesday and won dismissal of a “special circumstances” charge calling for the death penalty.

But it was only a first-round victory for Dr. Khalid Parwez, 38, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in West Los Angeles. The prosecutor said he will battle in higher court to seek either death or life in prison for Parwez.

“This case deserves it,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard D. Burns III said after Wednesday’s hearing. “The degree of depravity demonstrated is something that even a field medic in Vietnam would be horrified by. The systematic butchery is incredible.”

The remains of Parwez’ son, Raheel, was discovered by a maintenance worker Nov. 17 in a trash bin at a Hacienda Heights apartment shortly before a regularly scheduled trash pickup. His body had been cut into more than 200 pieces.

The boy had disappeared the day before at Mesa Robles Junior High School, where he was seen getting into into a blue car similar to one driven by his uncle, Sattar Ahmad, who reportedly rented the apartment where the murder was committed. Ahmad is a fugitive on a murder warrant.

The victim and his younger brother, Nabeel, 7, had been the center of a bitter custody battle between Parwez and his first wife, Amtul, 30. The physician won custody of the children last year, but their mother had renew her custody fight that had been scheduled to resume on Nov. 18, the day after the murder was discovered.

Parwez was arrested Dec. 2 and held without bail on a murder charge, including an allegation that that Raheel Parwez’s murder was so heinous that is justified death or life in prison without parole.

At Wednesday’s hearing, however, the lawyer representing Parwez, Leslie H. Abramson, maintained that the California Supreme Court has ruled in two cases that the “special circumstances” law has been found to be “unconstitutionally vague.”

Municipal Judge Robert A. Dukes agreed and dismissed the count.

The prosecutor, Burns, admitted that the law had been overturned, but he said that the Supreme Court had decided to review its earlier decision.

Outside the courtroom, Burns told reporters that the district attorney’s office had expected Dukes’ ruling but had filed for “special circumstances” anyway to use the Parwez case as a vehicle for appealing the challenged law to the Supreme Court, if necessary. “We would like to see the doctor remain in custody for the rest of his life or receive the death penalty,” Burns said.

Parwez, wearing county jail coveralls, responded with a quiet but firm “not guilty” when Dukes asked how he pleaded to the murder charge. He appeared calm and unemotional.

His lawyer, Abramson, said, however, that Parwez is “depressed” at all times. The case is “very tough,” she said, because her client is a “respectable person with no criminal past” who is beloved by his patients.

Parwez and his first wife, Amtul, were wed in Pakistan shortly before the couple immigrated to the United States in 1974. He interned at a hospital in Trenton, N.J., and joined the staff of Kaiser Permanent in 1980.