HOUSTON, Texas – “I stand before you an innocent man,” said Robert Solis in Harris County criminal court on Friday.
More than three years after he was first arrested and charged with capital murder, accused of shooting Harris County Sheriff’s Deputy Sandeep Dhaliwal to death during a routine traffic stop, Robert Solis is now on trial and representing himself in court.
On Friday, in his opening statement, he proclaimed to the jury he is innocent of killing Sandeep Dhaliwal, and he called the state’s case against him insufficient and not meeting the burden of proof needed to continue this trial.
”I stand before you an innocent man until you all go back there and deliberate and determine whether or not the state has met its burden and whether I intentionally and knowingly, a conscious objective, shot this deputy,” Solis told the jurors.
To prove their case against Solis, Harris County prosecutors presented their most powerful and heartbreaking evidence yet.
They showed the jury the actual video from Deputy Dhaliwal’s body cam showing Solis jumping out of his car, running up to Dhaliwal’s patrol car in the middle of a traffic stop, ordering him to put his hands up and not to move, and then quickly shooting the deputy in the head at point-blank range.
After that video was played, you could see members of the jury and members of deputy Dhaliwal’s family weeping in their seats.
As for Solis, just moments after the actual video of the murder was played, he asked the judge to render a summary judgment on the case right there and then and declare him acquitted of this crime, saying the state had failed to make an adequate case against him for capital murder.
“I believe I will be able to show that I had no intention of killing this man,” Solis told the jury, as he hung his head.
Hours later, Solis asked that the judge in this case to recuse himself, in other words, that he quit this trial entirely.
Testimony in the case will continue next Monday.