A once-trusted nanny who butchered two children in her care while their parents were away was convicted of murder by a jury that didn't believe her claims she was too insane at the time of the crime to be held responsible.
Jurors on Wednesday found Yoselyn Ortega knew what she was doing when she killed Lucia Krim, 6, and Leo Krim, 2, in October 2012. Ortega expressed no reaction to the verdict, staring straight ahead as it was read, but later wiped tears from her eyes as she was led from the courtroom.
FILE - In this Thursday, March 1, 2018 file image from video, Yoselyn Ortega, a trusted nanny to a well-to-do family, listens to court proceedings during the first day of her trial, in New York. (WYNY-TV/Pool Photo via AP, File)
The children's father, Kevin Krim, sat in the front row, clasping hands with two alternate jurors who had been dismissed but stayed for the verdict. He hugged them, and they wept together.
The children's mother, Marina Krim, who had returned home to discover them dead in a blood-soaked bathroom, was not in the audience but posted photos of them online after the verdict and expressed her undying adoration for them, writing, "I love you."
Ortega's lawyer Valerie Van Leer-Greenberg didn't dispute that Ortega killed the children but contended she had an undiagnosed mental illness that worsened in the moments leading up to the attack. She said Ortega snapped and didn't know what she was doing when she stabbed the children to death.
Mental illness "does not announce itself like a bad cough or a limp," Van Leer-Greenberg said during closing arguments. "Sometimes it sneaks up and nestles in before anyone takes notice."
But prosecutors maintained that Ortega, who's from the Dominican Republic, acted out of jealous hatred of the children's mother.
"She did it intentionally with a full understanding of exactly what it was she was doing — every stab, every slash," Assistant District Attorney Stuart Silberg said during closing arguments.
The verdict capped an emotional seven-week trial that kept jurors and members of the audience in tears. Jurors heard heart-wrenching testimony from Marina Krim, who spoke of the sickening, desperate moments when she saw her children's vacant eyes, their small bodies perforated by stab wounds.
Krim had been at a swimming class with her 3-year-old daughter, Nessie. Ortega was to have dropped off Lucia at her dance class, and Krim was to pick her up. But when Krim arrived, Lucia wasn't there. Krim frantically tried to reach Ortega, who had worked for the family for more than two years.
Krim spoke of coming home to an eerily quiet apartment, darkened but for the light in the back bathroom, where she found the children and Ortega, who had stabbed herself in a failed suicide attempt.
Krim ran to the landing outside the apartment clutching Nessie and started screaming.
"It was a scream you can't imagine is even inside of you," she testified. "I don't even know where it came from. I just thought: 'I'm never going to be able to talk to them ever again. They are dead. I just saw my kids dead.'"
Lucia, nicknamed Lulu, was stabbed more than 30 times, and Leo was stabbed five times.
At Ortega's trial, the children's father, who had been on a business trip and received news of their deaths when his plane landed, spoke of walking down a long hallway at the hospital where he saw their bodies.
"They still had this perfect skin and these long eyelashes," Kevin Krim said. "They had like sandy brown hair. ... You could see they tried really hard to wash all the blood out, but there was still kind of an auburn tint to it that I remember to this day."
Jurors, who deliberated for more than a day, said the trial affected them deeply. One, David Curtis, an actor, said it was difficult for him to set aside thoughts of his own children, now in their 20s.
"It is horrifying to think of being in a position of having to experience or go through the process that the Krims had to go through," said Curtis, who had tears in his eyes.
Kevin Krim said after the verdict he and his wife wanted to thank the judge and the jurors "for their commitment to justice." He stood at a press conference with Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, who said, "Marina and Kevin have lived through the worst nightmare any parent could endure."
Ortega, who's 55, faces life in prison when she's sentenced next month. Had she been found not responsible, she would have been committed to a mental institution.
Marina Krim is a stay-at-home mom, and Kevin Krim is a former CNBC executive now at a startup. They use a Facebook page to post updates on how they're doing, writing about the arrival of two new children, Felix, born in 2013, and Linus, born in 2016.
The couple started the Lulu and Leo Fund, which aims to support innovative art programs for children. After the verdict, they posted a collage of images of Lulu and Leo.
On Instagram, Marina Krim posted a photo from atop the Empire State Building.
"You two never made it to the top but I'm up here now for the first time, in peace, on top of the world, remembering another lifetime and thinking of you," she wrote. "NYC, Lulu and Leo loved you and I love you too!"
NEW YORK (AP) — The judge in Donald Trump's hush money trial ordered the media on Thursday not to report on where potential jurors have worked and to be careful about revealing information about those who will sit in judgment of the former president.
Judge Juan Merchan acted after one juror was dismissed when she expressed concerns about participating in the trial after details about her became publicly known.
The names of the jurors are supposed to be a secret, but the dismissed juror told Merchan she had friends, colleagues and family members contacting her to ask whether she was on the case. “I don’t believe at this point I can be fair and unbiased and let the outside influences not affect my decision-making in the courtroom,” she said.
Merchan then directed journalists present in the courthouse not to report it when potential jurors told the court their specific workplaces, past or present. That put journalists in the difficult position of not reporting something they heard in open court.
Some media organizations were considering whether to protest having that onus placed on them. Generally, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution bars judges from ordering journalists not to disclose what they hear and see in courtrooms open to the public, though there are exceptions, such as when military security is at stake.
New York criminal defense lawyer Ron Kuby said that while judges typically can’t control what the media reports, other options are available to protect juror anonymity, including restricting what reporters see and hear in the courtroom.
“There are actions the judge could take," he said. “Courts have extraordinary powers to protect jurors from tampering and intimidation. It is really where a court’s power is at its peak.”
The court action underscored the difficulty of trying to maintain anonymity for jurors in a case that has sparked wide interest and heated opinions, while lawyers need to sift through as much information as possible in a public courtroom to determine who to choose.
Despite the setback, 12 jurors were seated by the end of Thursday for the historic trial. Trump is charged with falsifying his company's business records to cover up an effort during the 2016 presidential election campaign to squash negative publicity about alleged marital infidelity. Part of the case involves a $130,000 payment made to porn actor Stormy Daniels to prevent her from making public her claims of a sexual meeting with Trump years earlier. Trump has denied the encounter.
New York state law requires trial attorneys to get the names of jurors, but the judge has ordered the lawyers in Trump's case not to disclose those names publicly. The jurors' names haven't been mentioned in court during three days of jury selection.
Still, enough personal information about the jurors was revealed in court that people might be able to identify them anyway.
Some news organizations described details including what Manhattan neighborhoods potential jurors lived in, what they did for a living, what academic degrees they had earned, how many children they had, what countries they grew up in and what their spouses did for a living.
On Fox News Channel Wednesday night, host Jesse Watters did a segment with a jury consultant, revealing details about people who had been seated on the jury and questioning whether some were “stealth liberals” who would be out to convict Trump.
Besides his order about employment history, Merchan said he was asking the media to “simply apply common sense and refrain from writing about anything that has to do, for example, with physical descriptions.”
He said “there was really no need” for the media to mention one widely-reported tidbit that a juror speaks with an Irish accent.
Anonymous juries have long existed, particularly in terrorism and mob-related cases or when there is a history of jury tampering. They have been ordered more frequently in the last two decades with the rising influence of social media and the anonymous hate speech that is sometimes associated with it. Usually courtroom artists are told they aren't permitted to draw the face of any juror in their sketches; New York courts do not permit video coverage of trials.
During the Trump defamation trial in Manhattan federal court earlier this year, jurors had heightened protection of their identities by a security-conscious judge who routinely did not allow anyone in his courtroom to have a cellphone, even if it was shut off. Jurors were driven to and from the courthouse by the U.S. Marshals Service and were sequestered from the public during trial breaks.
When asked general questions about themselves during jury selection in that case, prospective jurors often gave vague answers that would have made it nearly impossible to determine much about them.
After the ruling in that case, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered the anonymous jury not to disclose the identities of any of the people they served with, and advised jurors not to disclose their service. So far, none have come forward publicly.
Kuby said the ability of lawyers at Trump's trial to research the backgrounds of jurors was important.
“Both sides have interest in preventing sleeper jurors who have their own agenda from serving on the jury,” he said.
Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor who is president of the West Coast Trial Lawyers, said the difficulty at the Trump trial is weeding out people with extreme viewpoints.
“Everyone in the entire country knows who Donald Trump is," Rahmani said. "Some think he’s a criminal traitor and insurrectionist. Others think he’s a hero. You don’t have a lot of people in the middle.”
Associated Press writers Michael R. Sisak and Jake Offenhartz contributed to this report.
Former president Donald Trump, talks to members of the media while visiting a bodega, Tuesday, April 16, 2024, who's owner was attacked last year in New York. Fresh from a Manhattan courtroom, Donald Trump visited a New York bodega where a man was stabbed to death, a stark pivot for the former president as he juggles being a criminal defendant and the Republican challenger intent on blaming President Joe Biden for crime. Alba's attorney, Rich Cardinale, second from left, and Fransisco Marte, president of the Bodega Association, looked on. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Former president Donald Trump, motions to a crowd after visiting a bodega, Tuesday, April 16, 2024, who's owner was attacked last year in New York. Fresh from a Manhattan courtroom, Donald Trump visited a New York bodega where a man was stabbed to death, a stark pivot for the former president as he juggles being a criminal defendant and the Republican challenger intent on blaming President Joe Biden for crime. Alba's attorney, Rich Cardinale, second from left, and Fransisco Marte, president of the Bodega Association, looked on. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Members of the media gather outside Manhattan Criminal Court, Tuesday, April 16, 2024, in New York. Former President Donald Trump will return to court as a judge works to find a panel of jurors who will decide whether the former president is guilty of criminal charges alleging he falsified business records to cover up a sex scandal during the 2016 campaign. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Former President Donald Trump speaks with the media while holding news clippings following his trial at Manhattan criminal court in New York on Thursday, April 18, 2024. (Brendan McDermid/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump holds up news clippings as he speaks following his trial at Manhattan criminal court in New York on Thursday, April 18, 2024. (Timothy A. Clary/Pool Photo via AP)
In this courtroom sketch, former President Donald Trump sits beside his lawyer Todd Blanche on the second day of jury selection in his criminal trial in Manhattan criminal court in New York on Tuesday, April 16, 2024. (Christine Cornell via AP Pool)
Members of the media gather outside Manhattan Criminal Court, Tuesday, April 16, 2024, in New York. Former President Donald Trump will return to court as a judge works to find a panel of jurors who will decide whether the former president is guilty of criminal charges alleging he falsified business records to cover up a sex scandal during the 2016 campaign. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
Former President Donald Trump, flanked by attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, appears at Manhattan criminal court during jury selection in New York, Thursday, April 18, 2024. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via AP, Pool)
