The Maryland Court of Appeals has thrown out a Bethesda man’s depraved-heart murder conviction years after firefighters found another man naked and dead in tunnels beneath his house.
Daniel Beckwitt was convicted in the September 2017 death of Askia Khafra.
Beckwitt鈥檚 attorney, Megan Coleman, appealed both the murder and involuntary manslaughter conviction in April 2021.
The three judges on the Maryland Court of Appeals said there was insufficient evidence to uphold the murder conviction; however, the court did not find cause to overturn the involuntary manslaughter conviction.
Beckwitt will be resentenced to the involuntary manslaughter charge. A date for that has not been set.
The maximum penalty for involuntary manslaughter in Maryland is 10 years.
鈥淲e are pleased that the Maryland Court of Appeals, the highest Court in Maryland, has affirmed the conviction on the critical charge of Involuntary Manslaughter in the case of State v. Daniel Beckwitt,” State鈥檚 Attorney John McCarthy said.
“Beckwitt will be remanded for sentencing for this offense and faces up to 9 years in prison. The State will seek the maximum penalty in this case to hold the defendant accountable for his blatant disregard for the life of victim, Askia Khafra.”
The Maryland Court of Special Appeals in January 2021 overturned the murder conviction, but denied Beckwitt’s appeal of the manslaughter charge.
In 2019, Beckwitt was sentenced to 21 years behind bars, with all but nine suspended.
Beckwitt has been in a prison in Hagerstown since April 2019 in the death of Khafra, who was found burned to death in tunnels that he had been hired to dig underneath Beckwitt鈥檚 house.
Beckwitt was a millionaire day trader.
Firefighters found Khafra鈥檚 naked, charred body in the basement of Beckwitt鈥檚 trash-filled house, only a few steps from an exit. Prosecutors said the extreme hoarding conditions prevented Khafra from escaping.
Khafra met Beckwitt online. Beckwitt had invested money in a company Khafra was trying to launch as he helped Beckwitt dig the network of tunnels. A prosecutor described Beckwitt as a skilled computer hacker who had a paranoid fixation on a possible nuclear attack by North Korea.
Beckwitt took elaborate steps to keep the project a secret. He tried to trick Khafra into thinking they were digging the tunnels in Virginia instead of Maryland by having him don 鈥渂lackout glasses鈥� before taking him on a long drive. Khafra had a cellphone with him in the tunnels, but Beckwitt used internet 鈥渟poofing鈥� to make it appear they were digging in Virginia.
Khafra worked in the tunnels for days at a time, eating and sleeping there and urinating and defecating into a bucket that Beckwitt lowered down to him. The tunnels had lights, an air circulation system and a heater.
A hole in the concrete basement floor led to a shaft that dropped down 20 feet (6 meters) into tunnels that branched out roughly 200 feet (60 meters) in length. Investigators concluded the blaze was ignited by a defective electrical outlet in the basement.
Prosecutors said Beckwitt ignored obvious signs of danger and sacrificed safety for secrecy. Defense attorney Robert Bonsib told jurors the fire was an accident, not a crime. He described his client as an idiosyncratic but 鈥渋ncredibly brilliant鈥� man who never intended any harm.
草莓传媒’s Megan Cloherty and The Associated Press contributed to this report. This story has been amended to reflect the correct conviction聽
