Ivy League Graduate Ramanjeet Singh Sentenced to Life with a Minimum Parole Eligibility of Twenty Years

After over three years of legal deliberations, Ramanjeet Singh plead guilty but mentally ill to the crime of murder with use of a deadly weapon. Ramanjeet is sentenced to life with minimum parole eligibility of 20 years plus a consecutive term of 240 months with minimum parole eligibility of 36 months for the use of a deadly weapon with credit for the time already served. The court further ordered Ramanjeet to receive treatment for his mental illness during his incarceration.
On August 15th2016, Ramanjeet, in his early forties and a graduate of Ivy League Brown University, was charged with a Murder with use of a deadly weapon that led to the death of an individual in Las Vegas. As per the Physician, who evaluated Ramanjeet concluded that Ramanjeet had a history of chronic mental illness starting at age 22 when he made a suicide attempt.

After graduating from high school Ramanjeet graduated from California State University in 2002 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Information Systems. Ramanjeet attended Brown University where he graduated with a Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering. Following the breakup of a romantic relationship, he had his first episode of depression. He began to have psychotic symptoms while in graduate school at Brown University. At the same time, he became increasingly paranoid and began having visual hallucinations. Ramanjeet worked at some of the well-known companies – Conexant Semiconductors, Amgen, and Baxter Healthcare. In 2009 he was fired from his work for delusional thinking.
In 2010, Ramanjeet was arrested for assaulting his mother with a knife while experiencing command hallucinations. In 2015, Ramanjeet was arrested for slashing the tires of a neighbor’s car. In 2016, Ramanjeet was arrested on charges related to the stabbing death of Dale Peppers at the intersection of Rainbow and Charleston in Las Vegas. As per the witness, Ramanjeet walked up to the victim and started stabbing for no reason and said nothing to the victim and calmly walked away from the victim.
During the meeting with a Psychiatrist, Ramanjeet presented himself as a neatly groomed man wearing standard jail attire. His speech was clear and his eye contact was good. His thought process was tight and logical and he denied hallucinations at the time of interview. Throughout the interview, he was calm and cooperative. However, he mentioned dreams in which he chased demons and gets depressed because of his situation.
He strongly believed that people were laughing and talking about him, stating they were brainwashing each other against him and believing his food was being poisoned. By 2008, Ramanjeet entered into psychiatric outpatient treatment. By 2011, started believing completing missions for the CIA and FBI. He was diagnosed with Schizoaffective disorder. His delusions back then included that his parents were replaced by terrorists and that he was an orphan with a telekinetic communication device in his brain. Before the murder in 2016, Ramanjeet flushed his medications as he began to experience auditory hallucinations that commented that he did not need medications. At the same time, he again started experiencing hallucinations telling him that he had an implant in his brain and could communicate directly with the CIA. At the same time, he became homeless and progressively psychotic. He threw away his keys and his phone because of his delusional state. He attributed his auditory hallucinations to brain implants from the CIA and General Petraeus. He believed that he had a legal license to kill in order to complete his mission and responded to auditory hallucinations that he believed was from Leon Panetta, former CIA Director, to purchase a specific knife which he ordered online. He stated that his intent in stabbing the victim was to defeat this terror plot and to prevent potential terrorists from accessing classified technology. He believed that it was a “legal killing” because he was doing his job for the US government.
In October 2016, Judge ordered Ramanjeet to be admitted to Lakes Crossing Center for evaluation and restoration of competency. At the time of admission, he was described as paranoid, delusional, isolative, uncooperative and was diagnosed with a psychotic disorder.