Chanel Lewis has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for murdering a woman in New York City in August 2016.
Lewis, 22, killed Karina Vetrano while she was jogging in the Queens borough of the city.
Vetrano, 30, was sexually assaulted and killed as she ran on a trail in Howard Beach. A jury convicted Lewis earlier in April and Judge Michael Aloise handed down the sentence on April 23, reported Pix 11.
Prior to the sentencing, Vetrano’s mother Cathie Vetrano spoke.
Vetrano called Lewis “remorseless” and deemed him “a pathetic, evil coward” who “carried out the work of Satan” when he laid his “loathsome hand upon a child of God—my daughter, my innocent daughter,” reported the New York Post.
“So repulsive are you, that you left her [body] hidden to be further desecrated in the summer heat by bugs and animals … like a snake, you slithered away into the night,” Vetrano added. “My hope is that you live a long life within the prison of the law and the prison of your conscience.”
“That monster killed four people the night of August 2,” the victim’s father Phil Vetrano said, according to WABC. “One is in heaven. The other three walk the earth as zombies, just waiting to die to be with Karina again. There is no more pleasure in life.”
Lewis told the court that he did not murder Vetrano.
“The only thing I want to say is, I’m innocent. I’m sorry for the family’s loss, but I didn’t do this,” he said, according to the Post.
Before reading the sentence, Aloise said that the situation was a “lose lose” for the families of both Vetrano and Lewis.
“Parents’ worst nightmare, child goes out for a jog and never returns. In the future, you’ll find that the followers of this case would have moved on and you will be alone, but I tell you what, when that day comes around, you’ll be in a cage,” he said, reported WABC.
On Monday the judge had upheld the conviction after Christopher Gooley, one of the jurors, claimed that there was jury misconduct. But jury foreman Brian Morrissey told WABC that the case “was a slam dunk.”
“The DNA was overwhelming. One in a trillion, one in a billion. He confessed to it. It was not coerced. What can I say?” he said.
Lewis confessed to the police after being arrested in 2017, telling officers that he got angry when Vetrano tried to fight him off. He said he repeatedly punched her before dragging her into tall grass next to the trail. “I finished her off,” he said. “I was beating her and was mad at her.”
BREAKING: 22 year-old Chanel Lewis is sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole for the brutal beating and strangulation murder of Karina #Vetrano in August of 2016. Lewis was convicted in his second trial, after jurors were unable to reach a verdict last year. pic.twitter.com/2nYhqat5qI
— N. J. Burkett (@njburkett7) April 23, 2019
Police also found Lewis’s DNA on Vetrano’s body.
Jurors failed to reach a consensus after the first trial in November 2018, prompting a judge to declare a mistrial.
“It doesn’t seem like we can make progress. We feel that we have exhausted all of our options,” the jury wrote.
Prosecutors in the retrial focused on how Lewis gave a confession to detectives that was captured on video. They also said the DNA evidence and confession were enough to convict him of murder.
Defense attorneys argued that the confession was coerced and that the evidence wasn’t reliable.
The sentence of life in prison without parole was the harshest punishment that a judge could have given Lewis; New York state, one of the most liberal states in the nation, doesn’t currently have the death penalty.
