The Legal Aid Society released a statement pledging to continue its defense of Mr. Lewis.

“As we have said since Day 1, this case is far from conclusive and the jury’s deadlock proves this,” the statement said. “The death of Karina Vetrano is tragic and our hearts go out to her family, but the rush to criminalize our client is not the answer nor is it justice.”

Ms. Vetrano’s badly beaten body was found by her father on the night of Aug. 2, 2016, setting off a manhunt that involved scores of officers. In early February 2017, the police arrested Mr. Lewis on charges of murder and sexual abuse.

Mr. Lewis became a suspect after a police lieutenant said he had spotted Mr. Lewis loitering in Howard Beach in the months preceding the murder. The lieutenant, John Russo, told jurors that Mr. Lewis had been wearing thick clothing during the middle of summer and had avoided the police, which made him stand out. Later, the police reviewed a 911 call from May of that year that placed Mr. Lewis in the same part of the park where Ms. Vetrano’s body was discovered.

Soon after they identified him as a possible suspect, the police confronted Mr. Lewis at his home and asked him for a DNA sample. He confessed to the crime during a four-hour interrogation after his DNA matched a sample found on Ms. Vetrano. “I was beating her and was mad at her,” he told a Queens assistant district attorney in an interview that was videotaped.

Image Karina Vetrano was strangled in 2016 when she went for an after-work run in a Queens park. Credit...



In a nearly two-hour closing argument on Monday, the lead prosecutor, Brad Leventhal, raised his voice frequently to describe Ms. Vetrano’s murder. Then Mr. Leventhal acted out the crime, using both hands to show how prosecutors say Mr. Lewis first punched and then strangled Ms. Vetrano.

“If you follow the evidence, it leads you to one location; it leads you to to one person. Right over there,” Mr. Leventhal said, pointing directly across the courtroom at Mr. Lewis. “Chanel Lewis. Murderer. Killer.”