A Los Angeles couple convicted last month of child endangerment, not the original charge of murder they had faced, in the 2013 death of their adopted daughter will seek permission from an appellate court to go home while their appeal is pending, defense lawyers said this week. They will make their request at their first hearing, scheduled for Monday, the lawyers said. The couple, Matthew and Grace Huang, and their lawyers learned only this week of the legal grounds cited by the lower court for the guilty verdict. The lawyers said they were baffled by the child endangerment conviction, which carries a three-year prison term and was never part of the original case presented by prosecutors. “Everybody on our team was scratching their heads,” said Randy Papetti, one of the lawyers. “This is simply out of left field.” The Huang case has come to symbolize what critics call the arbitrary system of criminal justice in Qatar, where foreign workers constitute a majority of the population. The Huangs have said their daughter, Gloria, 8, suffered an eating disorder and was not denied food as asserted by prosecutors, who suspected the parents were child traffickers because they are of Asian heritage and Gloria was from Ghana. The exact cause of her death was never established.
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