This Queens judge apparently likes his jurors — and dry cleaning — to be hung.
Supreme Court Justice Michael Aloise, who stunningly declared a jury deadlocked in the Karina Vetrano murder case after just one day of deliberations, took advantage Wednesday of the unexpected time off the quick-draw decision earned him by picking up his laundry.
The errand-run came as one of those jurors revealed to The Post that several members of the panel wanted to keep weighing the charges against Chanel Lewis — who is accused of sexually assaulting and strangling the 30-year-old Vetrano on a jogging path in 2016 — when the forewoman sent a note to Aloise saying they were at an impasse.
“We were all not in agreement to end it where it ended,” said the juror, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“Some of us wanted to think about it some more. That note was sent and people were not ready to end it there. People felt like there could have been more deliberations.”
Aloise wouldn’t say why he didn’t push the panel of 12 jurors to go back and deliberate further — which legal experts called a routine move.
“I’m sorry. I can’t comment on that,” the jurist told a reporter with a smile as he emerged from a car outside his Astoria home with hangers-full of dry cleaning and a Nike duffel bag slung over his shoulder.
“Have a happy Thanksgiving. God bless you.”
Aloise stunned Vetrano’s family and most other observers Tuesday when declared a mistrial in the high-profile case without having first directed the panel to go back and try to work through their differences, a standard judicial practice known as an “Allen charge.”
And the juror reached by The Post said the panel was hardly unmovable.
The jurors agreed there wasn’t enough evidence to convict Lewis of sexual assault. At one point, seven jurors believed he was not guilty of murder while five found him guilty, the juror said.
“We all agreed that we didn’t have enough evidence to charge him with sexual assault and we were looking into the murder. Everyone had doubts,” the juror said.
“Seven of us were going toward not guilty and five of us going toward guilty on the murder charge. After some of us asked to watch the confession video again we voted again and it was the opposite way. Seven said guilty and five said not guilty.”
At that point, the forewoman sent a note saying the jurors were split — even though at least four of them opposed sending the message, the juror said.
“The note that was sent to the judge — we were all not in agreement to end it where it ended. The [forewoman] decided to send a note to ask for help and she was told that there is no way they could help us — to continue and see if we could change each other’s mind — and the note was still sent.
“A lot of people were upset that the note was sent to the judge at the time. Some of us wanted to think about it some more. That note was sent and people were not ready to end it there. People felt like there could have been more deliberations — the same way that two people changed their mind after seeing the video,” the juror said.
“Some of us were shocked, too, like what the hell just happened? It was upsetting. I’m not going to say I wasted my time, but i just feel like it should have been more time,” the juror said.
“It was kind of traumatic for me because I feel it was like a tragedy and I really wanted to see justice.”
Veteran lawyers, too, were floored that Aloise, who’s been a judge since 1999, didn’t send them back to deliberate.
“I have never seen [a mistrial] happen without an Allen charge. Never. The Allen charges normally work,” said defense attorney Sally Butler, a prosecutor in Queens for 15 years.
“Whenever you get that note, that’s the first thing the judge does. There was something definitely up.”
Civil rights lawyer Ron Kuby agreed that the outcome was “unheard of” given the short length of deliberations. “The first deadlock note, in my experience, never hangs the jury unless there is physical violence [among jurors] or other extraneous reasons,” Kuby said.
The panel had deliberated just one hour on Monday and 12 on Tuesday — after hearing a mountain of evidence against Lewis.
“Given the amount of deliberation compared with the length of the trial, it was not a particularly long deliberation,” Kuby noted.
The Queens DA’s office said it would retry Lewis.
“No one has seen that scenario that quickly. Could there be a mistrial? Absolutely. If it was three days from now, would it be surprising? Not at all,” said a source familiar with the trial.
“What puzzles people was the alacrity with which this was done.”
Butler said a hung jury also gives the defense a leg up in the second trial “because you have a much better ability to then figure out where the weakness is.”
“Doing it again is a disadvantage for the prosecution,” she said. “Now the defense attorneys already know what the witnesses are going to say. If the witnesses screw up, they can say, ‘Wait a second, you said this before.'”
Additional reporting by Larry Celona and Kenneth Garger