The saga of the retrial of Chanel Lewis should not END without special mention of the NY Times' coverage of the case by Jan Ransom

The title of Ms. Ransom's most recent article about this case, "Mystery of Karina Vetrano’s Death Ends With Murder Conviction" does not bespeak the very pithy content of her reporting about the summations and the "guilty" verdict handed down by the retrial jury in the Chanel Lewis case  ---  it is probably not  >>> HER <<<  choice for a title,  that being the province of some NY Times headline editor

In some ways, her lead paragraph says it all  ---  "A Brooklyn man was found guilty late Monday of murdering a woman while she jogged in a Queens park, ending a two-week trial that had raised questions about coerced confessions, racial profiling and police practices...."  (See  "Mystery of Karina Vetrano’s Death Ends With Murder Conviction"  by Jan Ransom,  4/1/19,  NY Times/ New York   [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/nyregion/karina-vetrano-trial-verdict.html]).

A little later in her piece, Ms. Ransom says that,  "....  Mr. Lewis’s first trial, five months ago, ended with a hung jury. Some jurors then were swayed by defense arguments that Mr. Lewis’s confession was coerced and that the DNA evidence was contaminated....   But after only five hours of deliberation on Monday, at his second trial, a different jury found Mr. Lewis guilty of first-degree murder and other charges for the strangling of Ms. Vetrano...." 

JAN RANSOM ENCAPSULATED KEY ELEMENTS OF THE TRIAL VERY WELL

For the prosecution there was this:   "....   With each witness, prosecutors sought to show that the DNA evidence had not been tainted and that Mr. Lewis had not been pressured into confessing to a crime he did not commit, as the defense argued....   The lead prosecutor, Brad A. Leventhal, said it was '376 billion times more probable it’s his DNA under her fingernails' than somebody else’s. Mr. Leventhal said the argument from defense lawyers that Mr. Lewis gave a false confession 'makes no sense.'...   Mr. Leventhal said evidence from cellphones placed Mr. Lewis in the area of the park at the time of the murder. He also stressed that Mr. Lewis’s cellphone contained downloaded images of the crime scene and internet searches about 'second chances.'..."

And for the defense, this:  "....  Mr. Lewis’s lawyers had sought to poke holes in the prosecution’s case, suggesting that the investigation into Karina Vetrano’s murder was 'sloppy.'  Investigators and the medical examiner, they said, had not checked for DNA evidence at the crime scene or on other parts of Ms. Vetrano’s body — aside from her neck and nails....   'This is tunnel vision clouding judgment,' said Robert Moeller, one of Mr. Lewis’s lawyers. 'You see things that could have been done were not done.'...   Mr. Moeller told jurors that reasonable doubt exists. He said there was no video of Mr. Lewis entering or leaving the park and no fingerprints or hair, or 'the kind of DNA that will tell you what happened.' He argued that Mr. Lewis’s DNA could have ended up on Ms. Vetrano through transference if they touched the same surface at some point....   He also argued that Mr. Lewis’s statements to investigators were inconsistent with evidence at the crime scene. He told the police she drowned in a puddle, for instance, yet autopsy results show she was strangled."