After 9 years, quick conviction in Times Square hotel murder
NEW YORK — It took nearly a decade after a prostitute’s battered body was found under a Times Square budget hotel bed for the case to go to trial. But it took only about two hours for jurors to convict the suspect in a prosecution that became a forum for debate over the validity of bite-mark evidence.
Jurors began deliberating late Tuesday afternoon and soon reached a guilty verdict in the case against Clarence Dean.
Dean, 44, now could face up to life in prison for Kristine Yitref’s August 2007 death. It followed an encounter between two people at New York’s fringes: he a convicted sex offender new to town, she a onetime design student turned crack-using streetwalker.
Arrested days after Yitref’s body was found, Dean already has spent one of the longest pretrial spells in jail of any New York City suspect, partly because of the bite-mark dispute. He declined to attend much of his trial, including closing arguments Tuesday.