After a short deliberation, a jury Monday night found Chanel Lewis guilty on all counts in the 2016 murder of jogger Karina Vetrano, CBS New York reports. Lewis, 22, of East New York, strangled and sexually assaulted the 30-year-old while she was out for a jog through Spring Creek Park, located at Howard Beach in Queens. His first trial ended in a mistrial last November.
The retrial featured two weeks of testimony, including from Vetrano’s parents. On Monday, the prosecution and defense spent hours on closing arguments.
The Queens assistant district attorney showed Karina’s last selfie, compared with her badly beaten body and highlighted DNA evidence, linking Lewis.
“Science determined that it was his profile on Karina’s neck. Science determined that it was his profile on her phone. And science detected that it was his DNA under her fingernails,” prosecutor Brad Leventhal said.
His defense, however, urged the jury to be skeptical, and said the forensic scientist’s process was flawed.
“[Investigators] took no elimination samples from anyone, including people at the scene,” defense attorney Robert Moeller said Monday. “You can see from the evidence things that could have been done weren’t done.”
The prosecutor showed that Lewis’ phone was near the scene of the crime and replayed confessions.
The defense contended the confession was coerced and the statements didn’t match up.
“He says he hit her five times with both hands,” said Moeller. “Well, common sense tells you, based on the injuries that you see in those photographs, that she was beaten from head to toe and it was more than five or six punches to the face.”
The argument came after an anonymous letter, allegedly written by an NYPD detective, was sent to the defense Friday, claiming prosecutors withheld vital evidence about the investigation. The letter said police were initially “looking for two jacked up white guys who are from Howard Beach” but only took DNA swabs from African American men.
On Monday, the judge denied a request from the defense asking for a hearing on the letter.
The NYPD said over the last two years it “already exhaustively examined the issues in this anonymous, 11th-hour letter, a missive riddled with falsehoods and inaccuracies.”
