Jury mulling sentence in Las Vegas karaoke slaying

— A Nevada jury will resume deliberating Monday whether an accused 25-year-old hit man for a Chinese gang should get the death penalty for brutally stabbing a man to death in a crowded Las Vegas karaoke bar over a $10,000 gambling debt.

A prosecutor told jurors Thursday that sparing Xiao Ye Bai's life would only put a ruthless inmate trained to kill with his bare hands atop the pecking order in Nevada's state prison system.

Bai's lawyers cast him as an abused child who became a frightened man.

Bai apologized to the jury on Wednesday, and his mother dropped to her knees from the witness stand Thursday and pleaded for mercy.

Bai was found guilty of stabbing Wen Jun Li to death and slashing two other people in July 2009.


The mother of a convicted killer dropped to her knees and pleaded for mercy from a Nevada jury deciding whether to sentence her 25-year-old son to death for stabbing a man 32 times in a crowded karaoke bar.

"Please spare his life," Ying Chen said through a Mandarin interpreter. "Please, I beg you. Don't kill him."

Judge Michael Villani briefly stopped the penalty phase of Xiao Ye Bai's trial in the bloody slaying of Wen Jun "James" Li and the wounding of two other people in July 2009 in Las Vegas.

Proceedings resumed a few minutes later with no mention of the outburst.

The same jury found Bai guilty of multiple felonies on Monday. Testimony in the penalty phase has detailed Bai's violent upbringing as a mitigating factor in his defense.

Jurors have been told that Bai trained in martial arts in China before arriving in the United States as a teenager in 2005, and that he served as an enforcer and hit-man for a gang called United Bamboo.

Chen testified she hit her young son with a baseball bat to discipline him before he was sent to a martial arts boarding school in China.

Bai spoke to the jury Wednesday for the first time, holding his hand over his heart and apologizing for stabbing Li to death and slashing the two other people.

"I just want to say I am so sorry - very, very sorry," he said. "That's not from my mouth. That is from my heart."

The jury has found Bai guilty of first-degree murder, extortion, kidnapping, conspiracy and burglary.

Prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo said Bai was acting to collect a $10,000 gambling debt on behalf of United Bamboo.

A man was slashed on the arm after Li tried to use him as a shield to get away from Bai, and a woman was wounded when she tried to intervene, authorities said.

The jury can send Bai to death row or choose from a range of sentences including life in prison without parole, 20 years to life in prison, or 20 to 50 years in prison.

Defense attorneys Robert Langford and Robert Draskovich have vowed to appeal the guilty verdict.


