Queens man convicted second time for 1993 murder

Michael Robinson was convicted for a second time of murdering his estranged wife in 1993 last week. File photo via Legal Aid Society

By Jacob Kaye

For the second time in around three decades, a Queens jury found Michael Robinson guilty of murdering his estranged wife.

The verdict, which was reached last week after a one-and-a-half-week trial and a day of deliberation, came three years after Robinson was found to have been wrongfully convicted during the first trial concerning the killing of Gwendolyn Samuels in 1993.

While a group of appeals judges said in 2023 that newly discovered DNA evidence might have swayed a jury against finding Robinson guilty during his original trial, it didn’t appear to have much of an impact on the new jury, which rendered its verdict on June 10.

Jurors sided with the Queens district attorney’s office, which claimed that Robinson, in a jealous rage, stabbed Samuels, who was pregnant with her new boyfriend’s child, inside a Bayside home where she worked as an aide to a legally blind elderly woman, the only eyewitness to the crime. Robinson, who has maintained his innocence over the past three decades, claimed the case was one of a mistaken identity.

Though he previously served 26 years in prison for the murder, prosecutors in the Queens DA’s office have told Queens Supreme Court, Criminal Term Administrative Judge Michelle Johnson, who oversaw the case, that they believe Robinson should head back to prison after the conviction.

“This was a brutal crime that left a pregnant young woman dead and devastated her family,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said in a statement. “A jury convicted Robinson 32 years ago, but on appeal the verdict was reversed in 2023. Following a second jury trial, he was found guilty of a murder motivated by jealousy. It is my hope that this will bring Gwendolyn Samuels’ loved ones a measure of closure and comfort knowing that the defendant has been held to account for her death.”

Robinson’s attorneys with the Legal Aid Society said they plan to appeal the conviction, potentially continuing the legal saga that has made its way through the Queens courts for years.

"Although the jury has rendered its verdict, our work is not over,” a spokesperson for the Legal Aid Society said. “We intend to appeal and will continue to advocate for Mr. Robinson at every stage of the proceedings."

Robinson’s trial was an unusual one.

Nearly all of the witnesses who testified during the first trial have since died, including the sole eyewitness to the killing, then-88-year-old Elvina Marchon, who employed Samuels as an aide and whose house served as the scene of the crime.

As such, much of the prosecution’s witness testimony was read from transcripts from the 1994 trial, spoken aloud by a member of the DA’s office.

While the jury was aware the murder had been litigated before, they were unaware to what extent. Johnson instructed both prosecutors and the defense only to refer to a prior “court proceeding” when talking about the first trial. Both sides were also barred from mentioning the fact that Robinson’s original conviction was overturned.

But still, jurors heard both the prosecution and defense’s telling of Samuels’ killing.

Prosecutors said that Robinson went over to Marchon’s two-story, two-bedroom home on a cold January Monday in 1993.

Once he arrived, he allegedly sat briefly with Marchon before joining Samuels on a trip to the grocery store.

When the pair returned, prosecutors claimed that Robinson followed Samuels upstairs and stabbed her multiple times in the back and then slit her throat before turning the knife on Marchon and fleeing the house.

Robinson’s attorneys claimed that Marchon mistook the killer for Robinson, who shared a last name with Samuels’ new boyfriend, Jermaine Robinson.

With no DNA evidence tying Robinson to the scene, the defendant’s attorneys said that Marchon was an unreliable witness who hadn’t been entirely forthcoming about the poor condition of her eyes during the original trial.

Though Robinson was found to have been wrongfully convicted after testing on old DNA evidence found under Samuels’ fingernails showed that the sample did not belong to him, neither the defense nor prosecution was able to determine who it belonged to.

Robinson will return to Queens Criminal Court for sentencing on July 1.