As a judge, Gregory Lasak handled the key initial hearing regarding the evidence in the Chanel Lewis murder case. His ruling in favor of the prosecution fully supported the NYPD’s handling of Lewis’ arrest.

Lasak’s analysis of Lewis’ two confessions (first to NYPD detectives, then to Queens prosecutors) is skewed in favor of the NYPD’s account, even though the videotaped statements were admitted into evidence for the hearing. According to Lasak’s ruling, in the initial statement, Lewis told detectives that he saw the victim, Karina Vetrano, “running by, grabbed her, and punched her.”  And “[f]or the most part, the defendant repeated the statements” to prosecutors four hours later.

What Lasak’s description leaves out is any reference to Lewis strangling Vetrano, which was the official cause of death. In the first statement, Lewis mentions strangling her only once, in passing; in the second statement, he says so several times, at times contradicting the first statement. The discrepancy strongly suggests that detectives coached Lewis to emphasize strangulation to the prosecutors. But Lasak’s distorted presentation of the facts enabled him to rule that the “statements were not the product of any police coercion.”