Queens DA Is Asked To Throw Out Contested Murder Conviction

QUEENS, NY — The Legal Aid Society has asked the Queens district attorney's office to throw out the conviction of a Queens man for a 1993 murder, arguing that new DNA test results by the city medical examiner's office "fully exculpate" him of the crime.

Michael Robinson spent 26 years in prison after he was found guilty of murdering his estranged wife at a Bayside home where she worked as a health aide.

Then, earlier this year, Legal Aid Society lawyers presented a new analysis of DNA from the victim's fingernails that showed it was 78 trillion times likelier that someone else was the source.

The city medical examiner's more recent analysis backs up that finding, the nonprofit's lawyers claim.

The Legal Aid Society announced Monday it has filed a motion to vacate Robinson's conviction based on the two DNA results.

"In the interest of justice, prosecutors owe it to Mr. Robinson to vacate this conviction," Harold Ferguson, staff attorney with the Criminal Appeals Bureau at The Legal Aid Society, said in a statement. "These results – from the city's own medical lab – fully exculpate our client."

But Queens prosecutors are standing by Robinson's conviction.

"The presence or absence of the defendant's DNA under the fingernails of the victim is irrelevant. We never argued that it was the defendant's DNA," the Queens district attorney's office said in a statement. "There is no evidence that the poor deceased woman in this case had the opportunity to struggle with her assailant."

"The evidence that convicted the defendant remains intact," the statement adds.

In 1993, a jury convicted Robinson of killing Gwendolyn Samuels at the Bayside home where she worked as a health aide. The woman who lived there, Alveina Marchon, was stabbed but survived. She testified against Robinson.

Legal Aid Society lawyers now argue that Robinson had an alibi and that Marchon, who was then 89 years old and suffered from vision problems, was an unreliable witness.

In July, New York State Supreme Court Justice Stephen Knopf called for a new hearing to assess the newly-discovered DNA evidence. It is currently scheduled for Nov. 18, 2019.

Robinson has been out on parole since March.