Chanel Lewis — the man serving a life sentence for the murder of Queens jogger Karina Vetrano — should have his conviction overturned because cops used an unfair “racial dragnet” targeting black men before landing on him as their prime suspect, his attorneys argued in new court papers.
Prosecutors allegedly failed to disclose the use of the so-called dragnet — in which the NYPD conducted DNA testing on “hundreds of black men” — before arresting Lewis, now 27, in the high-profile 2016 slaying, according to the documents filed Monday.
Detectives used the controversial testing method all because Parabon Nanolabs — “an outside, unlicensed lab” — had concluded “that the DNA profile of the perpetrator generated from the crime scene belonged to a black man,” Lewis’ lawyers, Ronald Kuby and Rhidaya Trivedi, wrote in the filing.
“How this racial dragnet led specifically to Chanel Lewis’ door remains unknown,” the filing states.
The alleged use of the dragnet was not disclosed to the defense team ahead of trial, the attorneys claimed.
In fact, it only came to light in a whistleblower letter that surfaced before jury deliberations at the second trial where Lewis was ultimately convicted — following a hung jury at the first trial, according to the court document.
Parabon had issued a report to the NYPD after conducting biogeographic ancestry and phenotyping analysis on DNA lifted from the 30-year-old Howard Beach jogger’s cellhone, the filing alleges.
Since-resigned prosecutor Brad Leventhal allegedly “intentionally” hid Parabon’s report — and the “paper trail” showing that the NYPD used the company that wasn’t licensed in New York state, the court papers claim.
Testimony from detectives at trial “was carefully tailored to maintain a shroud of secrecy over the racial dragnet,” — with one detective allegedly lying at least once on the stand, the filing claims.
Lewis’ right to a fair trial was violated and had the new evidence come out earlier he may not have been convicted, his attorneys argued.
“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,” the filing charges.
The move to vacate Lewis’ 2019 conviction and request a new trial is coming years later r because “it took a very long time to confirm that the NYPD used Parabon and it’s racial phenotyping in the Lewis investigation,” Kuby told The Post on Tuesday.
Lewis’ attorneys also spent a long time trying to get the necessary documents from the Queens District Attorney’s Office “to no avail,” Kuby claimed.
In 2021, nearly 40,000 signed a petition demanding that the DA’s office review the case claiming the trial was riddled with issues, including a history of prosecutorial misconduct by Leventhal, who resigned amid the allegations.
“The NYPD engaged in a massive racial dragnet, inspired by a DNA lab not permitted to work in NYC, then worked with a now-disgraced prosecutor to conceal it, hide the documents that would have proven it, and then promoted a phony story about dogged police work and good luck to conceal the intensely racist nature of the investigation,” Kuby said in a statement.
Queens DA Melinda Katz’s office said: “we do not comment on pending litigation.” Katz’ predecessor Richard Brown prosecuted the case against Lewis.
