According to new court records, Chanel Lewis is seeking to have his conviction for the murder of Queens jogger Karina Vetrano, for which he is currently serving a life sentence, overturned.
His attorneys claim that the police improperly used a “racial dragnet” to improperly target black men before identifying him as the primary suspect in the most recent development, and as a result, his conviction should be overturned.
Who is Chanel Lewis?
The age of Chanel Lewis is 27. In 2016, Chanel Lewis was convicted of killing Karina Vetrano, a speech therapist with 30 years of experience working with autistic children. Vetrano carried out the deed while running in a park near her Queens home. Vetrano’s fingernails and other evidence found at the Howard Beach crime scene, according to police and prosecutors, matched Lewis’s DNA.
Lewis was taken into custody after the initial jury in the case was unable to reach a decision. Lewis was ultimately found guilty by the subsequent jury, which included a juror who claimed that some of the other jurors had violated the rules intended to ensure a fair trial. This included a jury that predicated their verdict that Lewis was guilty on the second day of the trial.
In a recent motion submitted this week, Lewis’s legal team alleged that the Queens district attorney’s office and the NYPD were compelled to use any means necessary to obtain a conviction, potentially violating Lewis’s constitutional rights in the process, as a result of the intense public and media pressure to crack the high-profile case.
The police allegedly violated Lewis’ rights when they searched him and took samples from him without a valid warrant, the defense claims. Additionally, they contend that there was insufficient evidence to link him to the crime and that he and other Black men were unfairly singled out for attention due to their race.
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