4 jurors committed misconduct in Karina Vetrano trial: defense
By
Shari Logan and
Emily Saul
April 18, 2019 | 7:29pm
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Chanel Lewis AP
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Lawyers for Karina Vetrano’s convicted killer claim that at least four jurors on the panel that found him
guilty in the jogger’s 2016 slaying committed misconduct, new court documents show.
The motions by Chanel Lewis’ defense team allege two jurors talked about the case before deliberations kicked off — despite warnings from the judge not to do so.
One of those jurors is also accused by the defense of ripping up someone’s request to hear evidence because the panelist didn’t want to stay late.
Yet another female juror told a male panelist to shut up after he questioned whether Lewis had raped Vetrano because there was no vaginal DNA evidence. The female juror said she herself was a rape victim and knew more about sexual assault than he did.
Finally, another panelist tried to draw comparisons between this case and a rape trial she’d sat on in The Bronx, defense attorneys said.
The jury found Lewis guilty of Vetrano’s killing April 1, following five hours of deliberation.
Ventrano, 30, was found strangled with her pants pulled down in a marshy area near her Howard Beach home. Lewis initially confessed but later recanted.
The filings, which led Lewis’
sentencing to be rescheduled Wednesday, seek to overturn the verdict as they recount the jurors’ alleged misdeeds.
The documents claim that two panelists improperly talked about their feeling on the case before deliberations.
“Specifically, JUROR B stated to JUROR A, ‘well, I have my mind made up, and I hope you do too’ after the victim’s parents testified,” reads one motion.
The filing also claims that when the juror who was a rape victim told another panelist to shut up, that wrongly led to discussions about the jurors’ personal DNA knowledge.
“JUROR D improperly supplemented the evidence presented at trial with her own personal experience in such a way that led others to feel they could not challenge her and had to take her at her word,” the papers say.
Lewis’s lawyers claim yet another juror, who previously served in The Bronx on a rape trial, also tried to insert her own expertise and draw parallels between the two cases.
Prosecutors filed their own set of motions refuting the allegations — including saying the same woman identified in defense papers as Juror D denied ever saying or hearing a similar statement.
The parties are due back in court Monday for hearings on the motions.
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