UP FRONT >>> THERE AIN'T NO FINGERNAIL DNA MATCH TO CHANEL LEWIS <<< THAT HAS ANY EVIDENTIARY VALUE IN THE VETRANO CASE --- Chief of Detectives David Boyce, the Queens DA's Office and the multiple statements by the Vetrano family have flat out LIED about that --- The DA's Office has lied about it both to the press and at trial
The ME's expert witness fudged her testimony to cover up the weaknesses of her fingernail DNA "evidence," which were well-known to her at the time --- including the fact that the ME's Office was discontinuing the specific test used to come up with her "fingernail DNA" testimony, because it was controversial and unreliable
The prosecution has acknowledged that there was fresh DNA on other objects in the crime scene belonging to an individual whose identity is known but has not been disclosed
And of course, one has to assume that both the crime scene and the the victim's body was loaded with the DNA of Phil Vetrano, Karina Vetrano's dad, who had been allowed to participate in altogether too much of the investigation, preparation, and prosecution of this case for somebody that should have been a prime suspect in the early stages
According to a November 2017 Daily Beast article, ".... While the medical examiner declared that Lewis’ DNA matched what was found on Vetrano’s cellphone and on her back, they do not state they found a match under Vetrano’s fingernails, contrary to statements made by the NYPD.... Instead, the medical examiner suggests that Lewis’ DNA may be present under Vetrano’s fingernails based on the Forensic Statistical Tool analysis, a controversial testing method used when a mixture of DNA samples are present. Forensic experts have criticized the method, and it was discontinued by the medical examiner’s office this year [emphasis mine]...." (See "He Confessed to Karina Vetrano’s Murder. But Did He Do It?" by Max Rivlin-Nader, 11/29/17, Daily Beast [www.thedailybeast.com/he-confessed-to-karina-vetranos-murder-but-did-he-do-it]).
However, there was some rather clear DNA evidence that was found and matched to any individual. According to the Daily Beast article mentioned above, ".... [A] second DNA match was found at the crime scene on an Arizona fruit punch bottle, according to the documents. Like Lewis’ DNA allegedly found on Vetrano’s back and cellphone, this wasn’t a mixture. The identity of this second match has been redacted...." Also at the time this Daily Beast article was written, the NYPD and the Queens DA's office were withholding much of the DNA data discovered in the case from the defense team. “.... 'The DA’s position is that none of the DNA found matched anyone at the [Vetrano} crime scene, so [the Chanel Lewis Defense Team is] not entitled to see it,' said Jenny Cheung, one of Lewis’ Legal Aid lawyers, referring to the DA’s refusal to hand over the full results of the 163 other DNA tests, as well as Lewis’ full DNA profile...."
By the time of the trial of Chanel Lewis more of the DNA reports were turned over to the defense's DNA team. Prior to the trail, several lawyers on the defense team had repeatedly stated that the victim's father Phil Vetrano "contaminated" the crime scene, however it is not clear if the NYPD and/or the Queens DA have turned over any of the DNA data that would tie Phil Vetrano to this crime scene, hence to the crime of his daughter's murder.
29 comments:
The Go Fund Me page is still at $296,000 with a goal of $400,000.
I hear Lt Russo just bought a new Hummer.
There's something very wrong with the Lieutenant Russo dogged persistence story pushed by the NYPD after Chanel Lewis was arrested in February 2017.
In early August 2016, CNN reported the police were checking on summonses given in the area of the Vetrano murder.
How did they miss Chanel Lewis at that time? Well, maybe they didn't.
The CNN report specifically said that there were two such reports for May 2016, which is exactly the time and number of incidents in May 2016 that Russo said he told the police about six months later, which led to the arrest of Chanel Lewis.
So where did the money go and what do the Vetranos need the money for?
Are they paying for the prosecution?
Ms Vetrano was found murdered in Ramblersville.
No, that archaic reference is well east of where Karina Vetrano's body was found, and actually in today's Hamilton Beach area around the JFK-Howard Beach station on the 'A' line.
The Vetrano murder scene was well to the west of that, it is across Cross Bay Boulevard from 'Ramblersville', past all of the built-up area of Howard Beach, and in the marshes pretty much next to the Spring Creek boundary of Southwest Queens.
Does Councilman Eric Ulrich think that the judge-declared mistrial in the Vetrano Murder case was in the furtherance of justice?
Has Ulrich seen the light on the scandalous handling of this case by the NYPD and the Queens DA; and is he ready to demand that the jerry-rigged charges and any further persecution of Chanel Lewis need to be dropped right now.
A generic BLACK suspect was put at the top of the NYPD list long before they settled onto Chanel Lewis as their patsy. That was after the OCME ran its DNA profile in the Vetrano case through some very controversial phenotype DNA data crunching. It was that which caused the Vetrano family and others to push for the legalization in NYS of 'familial DNA' profiling.
One in Six Trillion DNA match of the defendant. Defendant’s DNA found underneath victim’s fingernails, on neck, and on phone. But the troglodytes keep blathering on about conspiracy theories.
A hot race for Queens DA is coming together next year. Three white candidates running to replace out of town Brown. This case will be the issue.
That is a completely made up non-scientific number that has no validity whatsoever. Besides, it wasn't what the DNA expert testified to at the trial. She said that it was a one in six trillion chance that the profile overlap wasn't random.
What also was not brought up during the trial were similar DNA matches to Phil Vetrano at the crime scene and on the body of his daughter.
Murders are seldom chance happenings between strangers. Murders are most often committed by people who have some kind of close relationship.
Karina Vetrano looks like a very brutal rage killing.
Phil Vetrano found his daughter's body well off the beaten path in a hard to find location.
What do the DD-5s of the first interviews with Phil Vetrano actually show him saying? What do all of the forensics from Phil Vetrano show?
Shouldn't Phil Vetrano have been high up on any NYPD suspect list for at least six months -- until John Russo put the finger hard onto Chanel Lewis?
What were the interactions of Phil Vetrano and Howard Beach neighbor Det. Lieut. John Russo prior to the Chanel Lewis arrest?
Some of you are ridiculous the one in six trillion figure attests to the ownership of the genetic profile. It’s the defendant’s DNA, sucks for your conspiracy theory but those are the facts.
There is no ownership of a genetic profile.
The folks at Freakonomics blew up that myth years ago. A genetic profile is a 'mathematical tool' to be used or abused by forensic types, or to put it another way, it's a scientific card trick.
The computations get really ersatz if you factor in accidental or intentional transfer DNA, which the prosecution's DNA expert at the trial said was possible.
Transfer DNA is a weak profile, like is someone sneezes on a door knob and you touch it. That’s the result of transfer DNA, I can’t believe you people are posting ridiculous stuff about a conspiracy that never was.
'Transfer DNA is a weak profile'! Golly, Mr. Science, I didn't know that.
Why would that be? Isn't DNA, just DNA (except for the distinction in categories, especially for profiling purposes, between mitochondrial and nuclear)?
Somebody here seems to be defending the 'science'; while somebody else is trying to use the science to defend the cops and the Queens DA.
Forget the science, let's zero in on the biggest question about Chanel Lewis of all.
If Chanel Lewis really was the perp that killed Karina Vetrano in August 2016, why wasn't he found and arrested in six days instead of six months?
According to a CNN report just a couple days after the murder, police had the summonses and reports of two May 2016 incidents in Howard Beach that sound identical to the two Chanel Lewis May 2016 incidents in Howard Beach.
Follow the money. It will lead you to an off duty police Lt who volunteers his time.
Do you mean a certain detective lieutenant who works directly under Chief of Detectives David Boyce, is the Chief of D's liaison to local squads and is an expert in police practices & procedures?
The DNA evidence against the defendant is rock solid and matched in three different incriminating places. This is like the twilight zone.
.... And the same detective lieutenant that is a Howard Beach neighbor to Phil Vetrano, and an unnamed police chief whose hands are also very dirty in this mess that started with a very strange vigilante hunt involving the very same detective lieutenant for a black young man >>> specifically named "Chanel Lewis" <<< in a 911 call for being around in Howard Beach during a couple of days in May 2016; and then hunted down at the behest of that detective lieutenant in February 2017 for the murder of Karina Vetrano in a Federal Preserve near Howard Beach in August 2016.
5:32 PM is like a gnat that keeps buzzing near one's ear, with the same very faint but shrill whine, apparently not realizing that repetition does not make a falsehood true.
1) There is no rock solid DNA evidence anymore, that is a law enforcement myth that mathematically abuses human genome science to confuse and gull an uniformed and nontechnical public that superstitiously wants to believe in their local police and the apparent fairness of their justice system;
2) There are no three DNA "matches" in three different incriminating places involving any defendant named 'Chanel Lewis' in the murder of Karina Vetrano; and
3) If there is anything like a 'Twilight Zone', it involves the lengths that some people will go to defending this incredible concatenation of bad police work and intentionally false 'evidence' utilized to persecute a patsy named 'Chanel Lewis'.
btw, if the DNA evidence were so 'rock solid', why does the prosecution also need to rely on a patently bad confession, which is the only item that convinced a very thin majority of the hung jury to convict this defendant at the first [mis]trial.
UPDATE & BACKFILL: THE "NY TIMES SHOWS THAT IT GETS IT --- THE CASE AGAINST CHANEL LEWIS JUST GOT VERY HARD TO PUSH FORWARD" EDITION
EVEN THOUGH THE ARTICLE IN TODAY'S NY TIMES LOOKS LIKE IT'S ABOUT WHAT THE JURY DID (AND THAT CERTAINLY WAS DISCUSSED) THIS REPORT IN THE TIMES PRETTY MUCH FINISHED OFF ANY CHANCE OF CONVICTING CHANEL LEWIS
THE JURY LOOKED VERY CLOSELY AT THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE CONFESSION AND THE HANDLING OF THE DNA SAMPLES BY THE POLICE --- THE JURY ALSO REJECTED THE PROSECUTION'S MAIN THEORY OF THE CASE --- THAT IT WAS A HOMICIDE AND A SEXUAL ASSAULT
The Times article highlighted the inconsistencies in the evidence and what the jurors were actually focusing on when the trial judge granted a mistrial (See "The Murder Case Seemed Solid. Why the Jurors Still Would Not Convict" by Jan Ransom, 12/5/18, NY Times/ New York
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/nyregion/queens-jogger-trial.html]).
One of the key concerns was about why so many police officers had handled the DNA samples before it had been turned over to the lab for testing and analysis.
The defense now knows where to steer any future jury's attention and --- these weaknesses in the case against Chanel Lewis will not go away between now and anytime early in 2019.
7:48 obviously doesn’t understand DNA and or thinks we’re as uninformed as he or she purports to be. Just because you write down patently absurd claims doesn’t mean they can’t be debunked within minutes by an internet search. There is no myth of DNA if there was we wouldn’t match people's lineage using it. Oh and Gale, the NYT article was instructive, if any publication would be all over a Black man being “framed” it would be the Times and even they all but came out and said it was a product of a partially moron jury.
5:15 AM,
First, nobody said DNA is a myth, but what was said is that "... rock solid DNA evidence [ ] is a law enforcement myth that mathematically abuses human genome science... [psst, that's the real DNA science involving humans, not the ersatz forensic clap-trap]." And it doesn't help to confirm the proposition that DNA can prove that somebody committed a crime by showing other things that DNA analysis can do or prove.
Second, I think we are getting close to finding out what YOUR PERSONAL PROBLEM with all this might be. If you read the Times article and really think that it "... all but came out and said it [the hung jury] was a product of a partially moron jury..." then you are a pathological confabulator and possibly a bigot or very biased, to boot.
10:31 Actually I'm someone who knows about forensic science and has a functioning knowledge of what is DNA--unlike you--and how it is used in criminal investigations. That is the defendant's DNA at the crime scene, that is a fact you can't deny, you can babble about transfer and trace DNA all you want. This is a very simple proposition even for some of you troglodytes. Yes DNA ipso facto does not prove that someone committed a crime any more or less than a fingerprint on a handgun used in a crime proves guilt. What the DNA sample in this case does tell us definitively without any doubt is that the defendant's genetic material got on the neck of the victim which would explain the death by strangulation, the defendant's DNA was underneath the fingernails of the defendant which is consistent with signs of a struggle, and the DNA of the same defendant was also on the phone of the victim. If you read the Times article with comprehension you would have also noticed that the defendant visited a doctor with a hand injury the day after the victim died. The doctor noted that the injury was consistent with punching someone. Aside from being someone who clearly can't think too deeply about something, 10:31 must be a liberal democrat because true to their calling card any time a liberal is confronted with stone cold facts, they cry racism.
10:47 AM, just stop right there. Your claims about being '... someone who knows about forensic science and has a functioning knowledge of what is DNA... and how it is used in criminal investigations....' is pure and unadulterated 'bootstrapping'; it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing -- shew bop, shew bop, shew bop, shew bop!
You have no idea about what DNA was found at the Vetrano murder crime scene, so stop making outlandish claims; and as for my denying or not denying it's the defendants DNA, I only have my opinions and those of a few of the jurors.
What you say about the defendant's DNA being here, there or wherever is not reflected in what the DNA expert testified to at the trial, including in her fudged testimony on re-direct.
Contrary to your implication, I think I did read the Times article with fair comprehension earlier today; and then I re-read it after reading your comment. You should choose your words more carefully. Nowhere in today's NY Times article does it say that the defendant visited a doctor with a hand injury the day after the victim died; nor did the TImes reporter say any doctor noted that the injury was consistent with punching someone. What the Times article did say was this: "... Brad A. Leventhal, the lead prosecutor on the case, noted... [the defendant] also had a hand injury the day after the murder that a doctor said was consistent with punching someone...." I don't know what your background really is, but I'm sure you know that what attorneys say about a case they're on is not evidence.
I'll admit that I do have a problem thinking as deeply as I would like and some say I should (I'm sort of like the Strawman in "Wizard of Oz" that way); however, I certainly am no 'liberal democrat'; and I don't think that I have cried 'racism' when confronted with 'stone cold facts', quite simply because I have neither cried 'racism' nor been confronted with any 'stone cold facts.'
Better luck next time; and thank you for playing.
Whoever posted at 2:08 needs help. We know the DNA belongs to the defendant, we know where it was found. We know about the hand injury. Don't even need the confession which is there as well. Those are the facts and you can write a post the size of War and Peace but it won't change the facts. Writing copious amounts of malarkey doesn't change any of that.
Who is 'we' and why do you 'know' what you think you know about this case? Hmmmm!
So let's get this straight, when there are questions about the DNA, some people that want to see Chanel Lewis found guilty no matter what, say we don't need the DNA, we have his confession; and when there are questions about Chanel Lewis' confession, some people that want to see him found guilty no matter what say we don't need the confession, we have his DNA.
Nice work if you can get it.
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