HUNTINGTON, N.Y. (AP) - An appeals court has thrown out a Long Island man’s murder conviction, saying that DNA alone isn’t enough evidence to tie him to the 2013 death of woman whose body was found in a nature preserve.
The state Supreme Court’s appellate division ruled Thursday in Fernando Romualdo’s case. Convicted in 2017, he has been serving 25 years to life in the death of Sarah Strobel.
A hiker found Strobel’s body on the side of a path at the Froehlich Farm Nature Preserve in Huntington, with indications that the 23-year-old had been strangled. She lived in Huntington Station.
Fernando Romualdo, now 32, was arrested more than two years later, while he was serving a three-year prison sentence in an unrelated rape of a juvenile.
His DNA matched genetic material found on Strobel’s body.
But prosecutors “presented no evidence placing the defendant at or near the scene of the crime, or linking him in any way to the victim, during the critical time frame in which the murder was believed to have occurred,” an appellate division panel wrote in a 3-1 ruling that overturned Romualdo’s conviction and dismissed the indictment against him.
The Suffolk County District Attorney’s office said it plans to appeal.
Romualdo’s lawyer, Felice Milani, said his attorneys were glad that the appeals judges recognized “the lack of evidentiary proof that Mr. Romualdo committed any crime against Ms. Strobel.”
“Her death remains a tragedy that needs to be solved,” Milani said.
Having completed his sentence on the rape charge, Romualdo is expected to be released, Milani said.
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