Article originally posted on NorthJersey.com — link to the original article can be found by clicking here.
PATERSON — A jury has acquitted Derrick Chestnut of rape, a verdict delivered Tuesday after six hours of deliberation and nearly 19 years after a woman claimed she was sexually assaulted after getting off a bus on Lexington Avenue in Clifton.
Chestnut put his face down on the defense table and tears streamed down his cheeks as the jury forewoman announced: “Not guilty.” The verdict cleared Chestnut of a single charge of aggravated sexual assault and lesser charges of sexual assault and aggravated sexual contact. He faced up to 20 years in prison had he been convicted.
“Thank you,” he whispered as the jury of 11 women and one man filed past him while leaving the courtroom. Chestnut then hugged his attorney, John Weichsel, and embraced his wife and son before walking into the hallway a free man.
He paused before getting on the elevator to offer his thoughts.
“My God, and through him, I can do all things,” Chestnut said. “Now I’d like to thank these [court] officers, because they were very friendly to me and very professional. And I got one of the best attorneys in the state of New Jersey, John Weichsel.”
Chestnut offered his sympathies for the victim, but expressed bitterness to Michael McLaughlin, the Clifton detective who pursued the case against him and testified at the trial.
“And for the victim, I hope these people really get down to finding out who did this to that young lady, because she doesn’t deserve this,” Chestnut said.
The jury deliberated for about six hours over two days. The state based its case largely on the testimony of the victim, who is now 38 years old, and DNA evidence obtained through a vaginal swab on the night of the Aug. 16, 2000, attack.
The jury appeared to have difficulty accepting the highly technical testimony of the state’s DNA expert, Dolores Coniglio-Rivera, who analyzed the vaginal swab at the New Jersey State Police laboratory in 2001. Five minutes after deliberations began on Monday, the jury asked for a copy of Coniglio-Rivera’s report, to which she referred during her testimony.
But the jury wasn’t allowed to see the report, because it was never entered into the case as evidence. That’s not unusual. Witnesses, particularly police officers and investigators, are often called to testify in cases of which they have only a vague recollection.
They’re allowed to use their reports to refresh their memory. But referring to a report during testimony doesn’t automatically make it evidence that the jury can examine during deliberations.
In this case, Judge Joseph A. Portelli denied the jury’s request to see the DNA expert’s report. The jury then asked to hear a full playback of her testimony, which the judge granted. The playback lasted over an hour and was filled with scientific jargon.
As he left the courtroom after the verdict, Barrera said he didn’t enter the report as evidence because it contained some information that might have been considered prejudicial to the jury.
Complicating matters was the fact that the sperm of two men were found inside the victim. The woman testified she’d had consensual sex with another man two days before the attack, but the state police never worked up a DNA profile on that individual.
On the witness stand, the woman gave a frightening account of getting off the bus at Lexington Avenue near Center Street shortly before midnight, then hearing footsteps and being grabbed from behind as she walked on Lake Avenue. She testified that because it was dark, she never got a good look at her attacker, and therefore could not point him out in court.
In 2007, the New Jersey State Police notified the Clifton Police Department that the DNA sample came back as a possible match to Chestnut. But he was not charged at that time.
It wasn’t until 2012, when the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office inquired about the status of the case, that the Clifton police reopened the investigation.
Clifton police relocated the victim and interviewed her. During that interview, McLaughlin told her that the DNA analysis had pointed to Chestnut and she was asked if she knew who he was. It was at that point that the woman said she was familiar with Chestnut, and had known him through a mutual friend, but that she never had sex with him.
Coniglio-Rivera, a forensic scientist for the state police, testified at the trial that the semen of two men was found inside the victim.
Based on her analysis, Coniglio-Rivera estimated that the DNA profile linked to Chestnut could be found in one of every 14,600 African-Americans. But she could say only that Chestnut “could not be excluded” as a suspect in the case.
“They never said it was a confirmed match,” Weichsel said.