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Chanel Lewis, convicted of killing woman jogging in Queens, asks for new trial
By
Samantha Max
Published Aug 22, 2023
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By
Samantha Max
Published Aug 22, 2023
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Attorneys for a Black man sentenced to life in prison for the sexual assault and murder of a white woman are asking a judge to give their client a new trial, because they say police and prosecutors didn't disclose key evidence.
Chanel Lewis was convicted in the 2016 killing of Karina Vetrano, a 30-year-old speech pathologist for children with autism who was running in a park near her home in Queens. Police and prosecutors said Lewis' DNA matched evidence found at the Howard Beach crime scene, including under Vetrano’s fingernails.
The case captured national attention as police struggled for months to find a culprit. After law enforcement charged Lewis, the first jury to hear the case couldn’t reach a verdict. A member of a second jury, which found Lewis guilty, alleged jurors violated rules meant to ensure a fair verdict — citing one juror announcing on the second day of trial that he thought Lewis was guilty.
Lewis’ attorneys argued in a motion filed this week that the mounting pressure to hold someone accountable in the high-profile case led the NYPD and the Queens district attorney’s office to find someone guilty by whatever means necessary — even if that meant violating Lewis’ constitutional rights.
They say police violated Lewis’ rights by searching and swabbing him without a warrant. They also say there wasn’t enough evidence to suspect him of the crime, and that he and other Black men were targeted because of their race.
One of Lewis’ attorneys, Ronald Kuby, said he believes it’s indicative of long-running misconduct that continues to the present day. The city recently agreed to pay out tens of millions of dollars to men who say they were wrongfully convicted based on police and prosecutorial misconduct in the 1990s.
“Once the cops and the DA are convinced that they have the right person and can sell it to a jury, they don't care how they got there,” Kuby said in an interview.
The Queens DA’s office declined to comment on pending litigation. The NYPD hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment made on Monday, and the police unions haven’t responded to a request made on Tuesday.
Vetrano’s father, Phil Vetrano, said he was surprised to hear about the motion when contacted by Gothamist on Tuesday, but said he was not immediately available for an interview.
Kuby said he isn’t arguing at this point whether his client is innocent. Rather, he and co-counsel Rhidaya Trivedi say the case against Lewis rested on just two pieces of evidence — a confession and the DNA test — and that neither is reliable enough to convict their client because of the misconduct they allege.
They also argue that the prosecution should have disclosed to the defense that police identified Lewis as a suspect through mass testing of Black men’s DNA.
The motion asks the court to throw out Lewis’ conviction and either dismiss the indictment against him or order a new trial, during which Lewis’ attorneys would be able to ask new questions about the evidence against their client. They argue that police and prosecutorial misconduct they’ve uncovered casts enough doubt on the case to reopen it.
The attorneys argue in the filing that “while the truth of what happened in this case remains unknown, what is known is that the truth has been willfully, intentionally and maliciously suppressed in order to guarantee a conviction.”
Questions about DNA testing
The 65-page legal filing mainly focuses on the story police and prosecutors told in court about how they zeroed in on Lewis as a suspect after months of dead-end leads.
According to the motion, NYPD Lt. John Russo testified in court that he thought to swab Lewis’ DNA after he spontaneously remembered an encounter with him from several months before Vetrano’s murder. He said he had seen Lewis walking around his neighborhood in Howard Beach and called 911, because he thought Lewis might be “casing a house on the block” for a burglary. The next day, Russo said, police stopped and frisked Lewis, but found no evidence of a crime.
The motion cites Russo’s testimony that, once he recalled the incident while investigating Vetrano’s killing, he asked detectives to track down the man’s name and location, so his DNA could be tested as a potential suspect.
It points to news reports and an anonymous NYPD whistleblower’s letter claiming that police tested hundreds of Black men’s DNA, saying that should have been revealed to the defense.
Private DNA testing firm Parabon NanoLabs confirmed to confirmed to The Nation last year that police hired the company to conduct an ancestry test, which found samples from the crime scene likely belonged to someone of European and African descent. But the test was not shared with defense attorneys ahead of trial, according to the motion. Lewis’ attorneys called the method an “emerging science” that the defense team should have had the chance to scrutinize in court.
The motion states there’s no guarantee “that Parabon NanoLabs’ conclusions were reliable, and that their methodologies had integrity.”
Parabon NanoLabs did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.
Allegations of what Lewis’ attorneys call a “racial dragnet” of DNA testing emerged during his second trial, when the NYPD whistleblower sent the letter to them. The letter said police initially thought “two jacked-up white guys” were responsible for the murder, but later shifted their focus to Black men. But prosecutors tried to discredit the letter, because the author was anonymous, and the judge decided not to look into the claims.
Lewis’ attorneys now argue that the Queens DA’s office was trying to conceal the scope of the DNA testing and its focus on Black men.
The motion also notes that the trial prosecutor, Brad Leventhal, resigned in 2021 after a Queens judge learned that he had coached witnesses and informants into lying about what happened in the 1996 killing of a police officer and a business owner, as well as withheld police reports and notes that identified other likely suspects. Leventhal could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.
Tagged
queens
public safety
Race And Justice Unit
Samantha Max
Samantha reports on whether New Yorkers feel safe and whether the institutions that are supposed to protect them are working. Before coming to WNYC/Gothamist, she spent three years covering the criminal justice system in Tennessee for Nashville Public Radio. Her reporting on Nashville's police department received multiple awards, including the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize. Samantha was also part of the inaugural class of Report for America, a service journalism program that sends up-and-coming reporters to local newsrooms across the country. She is a Northwestern University grad, a Baltimore native and fluent in Spanish. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal: samanthamaxwnyc.93.
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