Activists Call On Queens DA's Office To Review Chanel Lewis Case

KEW GARDENS, QUEENS — Activists are demanding that the Queens District Attorney's Office review the case of Chanel Lewis, who was convicted of murdering Queens jogger Karina Vetrano in a controversial retrial earlier this year.

Members of activist groups Color Of Change and VOCAL-NY took to the steps of Queens Borough Hall on Tuesday to protest the verdict against Lewis and deliver a petition with more than 30,000 signatures to representatives from the DA's Office.

"We believe that Chanel Lewis didn't get a fair trial at all, so we want this case to be reopened," Color Of Change's Kristen Miller told Patch.

Lewis was sentenced to life in prison without parole in April for the 2016 murder in Howard Beach.

The retrial was tainted by accusations that the judge rushed the jury to reach a verdict and that prosecutors withheld favorable evidence from the defense, as well as allegations of juror misconduct.

(Keep up with news in Queens by subscribing to Queens Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

Here is Chanel Lewis’s mother, Veta.
“My son does not deserve to be in a cage. He’s not an animal,” she says.

She says he did not get his constitutional right to a fair trial. pic.twitter.com/RoXqguOkxy
— Maya Kaufman (@mayakauf) June 11, 2019

Flatbush resident Mo Glover, 31, started the online petition earlier this year because she felt Lewis was getting unfair treatment and was the subject of racial profiling, she told Patch in April.

"As a woman of color, I feel that this could happen to anyone," Glover said. "This could happen to someone I know, to my son."

The activists Tuesday said Lewis's case recalled the infamous Central Park Five case, which saw five young black men wrongfully convicted for a 1989 attack on Central Park jogger Trisha Melli. (The latter case is the subject of the recently released Netflix film "When They See Us" by Ava DuVernay.)

Activists called Lewis's case similarly fraught with concerns of prosecutorial misconduct and racial profiling.

"The duty of the DA's office is to secure justice, not a conviction," VOCAL-NY member Peter Thomas said Tuesday.