Federal judge denies convicted Staten Island murderess' bid to overturn conviction

elena-kiejliches.jpgConvicted killer Elena Kiejliches cries as she speaks about her children during a interview with an Advance reporter at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester on Sept. 20, 2006.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Found guilty in 2002 of slaying her millionaire husband, Todt Hill resident Elena Kiejliches has spent the ensuing years maintaining her innocence and trying to overturn her conviction.

State courts have turned her down, and now, so has a federal court — on each of seven different issues she raised, including the veracity of her ex-lover’s pivotal testimony against her.

District Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis of Brooklyn federal court has denied Mrs. Kiejliches’ challenge of her conviction for second-degree murder and evidence tampering. The judge ruled there was no proof she had been found guilty against the weight of the evidence or had been denied due process to a fair trial.

"This claim has no merit," the judge wrote in a ruling filed on Friday.

Mrs. Kiejliches, who represented herself, can appeal the decision to a federal appellate court. She could not immediately be reached today for comment.

The glamorous Russian émigré, now 45, is serving a sentence of 22 years to life for the March 24, 2000, execution-style killing of Borys Kiejliches. She is not eligible for parole until June 2024.

Prosecutors contended Mrs. Kiejliches snuffed out Kiejliches, 48, a jet-fuel magnate whose net worth was estimated at $3 million, because he had threatened financial ruin after they argued over money, divorcing and her affair with Messiah Justice, a smooth-talking, streetwise felon.

Mrs. Kiejliches maintained Justice, now 37, cooperated with authorities to try to save his own skin. He testified that she confessed to slaying Kiejliches in the basement of their pricey East Loop Road home.

Mrs. Kiejliches then whisked away her young son and daughter on a planned Disney World vacation, saying her husband had left in the middle of the night, prosecutors said.

Justice admitted dumping the body in a cardboard barrel into an inlet near the Brooklyn-Queens border.

Kiejliches’ badly decomposed corpse, bound and wrapped in towels, was found in the barrel about a month later.

Justice pleaded guilty to evidence tampering and hindering prosecution and was sentenced to one and one-third to three years in prison.

"We presented overwhelming evidence to a Staten Island jury that the defendant murdered her husband, Borys Kiejliches, and they returned a guilty verdict in less than three hours," said District Attorney Daniel Donovan today. "I am confident that verdict will be upheld by every judge at every stage of the appeal process."

Assistant District Attorney Anne Grady handled the appeal.

Mrs. Kiejliches contested the verdict on several fronts.

In particular, she argued that Justice’s testimony was "impermissibly unreliable," because he had cozied up to authorities.

Garaufis deemed there was no evidence of perjury.

"[Mrs. Kiejliches] makes no showing that Justice was too uncredible for the jury to credit his testimony," the judge wrote. "It is axiomatic that using a cooperating witness does not violate due process. The jury was instructed by the court that they were to scrutinize Justice’s testimony in light of the fact that Justice was a cooperating witness, and may receive a benefit for testifying."

Garaufis also shot down Mrs. Kiejliches allegations that prosecutors had withheld exculpatory evidence and of juror misconduct.

The evidence consisted of a microcassette tape memorializing a post-murder phone conversation between Mrs. Kiejliches and Justice. Justice called her from a police station to try to glean information, court papers said. Mrs. Kiejliches contended that Justice told her he had to kill her husband because he was a threat after learning of their affair.

However, at a pre-trial hearing, Assistant District Attorney Wanda DeOliveira said detectives and Justice told her neither person made a damaging admission on the tape, Advance reports show.

Authorities lost the cassette.

Garaufis ruled that Mrs. Kiejliches, who participated in the conversation, was not precluded from the evidence and could have introduced it at trial. Mrs. Kiejliches did not testify.

He also said there was no evidence the tape was lost in bad faith. Authorities said the cassette had either fallen out of a box it was placed in or a prosecutor had unintentionally lost an envelope containing it.

Moreover, Garaufis said, trial Justice Stephen J. Rooney had properly instructed jurors they could infer the tape, had it been produced, may not have supported or may have even contradicted witness testimony.

Garaufis also found there was no evidence of "egregious" juror misconduct.

Among other things, Mrs. Kiejliches contended the jury was prejudiced because a panelist knew one of the trial prosecutors.

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