Metro

Granny horror retrial

Her first jury found her guilty of homicide.

But now Lynette Caban, a lead-footed driver with a suspended license who struck and killed a grandmother in 2003, is getting a chance to beat the rap, thanks to a momentary mistake six years ago by a now-retired Manhattan judge.

Caban is once again facing charges of criminal negligence for driving backward against a light through a Third Avenue crosswalk, catapulting sweet, 82-year-old Francesca Maytin to her death.

Her case has bounced between two appeals courts, ultimately being set down for retrial due to errors committed by former Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Budd Goodman during the original deliberations.

Goodman’s mistake? He did not allow lawyers in the first trial to comment on notes sent to him by jurors during their deliberations, in violation of trial procedure.

“We the family are heartbroken to go through this again,” the victim’s tearful granddaughter, Maribell Rodriguez, said yesterday, after taking the stand in the first day of testimony at Caban’s new trial. “We hope we get justice and people like Lynette Caban do not drive ever again.”

The events that led to the tragic Jan. 2, 2003 crash that killed Maytin began shortly after she left her East Harlem apartment to shop for gifts.

Caban was driving a green Jeep Cherokee carrying three adult passengers. According to court records referring to the previous trial, Caban wanted to let her passengers out at a pizza shop when she stopped her car and sped in reverse through the intersection where Maytin had stepped off the curb.

When she plowed into Maytin at as much as 19 mph, it sent the 170-pound woman airborne at least 15 feet, according to Manhattan prosecutors.

“How fast was Lynette Caban going?” prosecutor Matthew Bogdanos said in morning opening statements. “Fast enough to end her life.”

Defense lawyer Andrea Wagner of the Legal Aid Society, in her own opening statement, called the crash “a terrible tragedy” and not a homicide.

She wished jurors luck with the difficult testimony to come.

“There may be tears from the audience,” Wagner told jurors. “There may be tears from the witness stand, and there may be tears from the defense table.”

Just three months before the crash, in October 2002, Caban had been issued four summonses under chillingly similar circumstances — barreling backward into an intersection in front of a Bronx school in an attempt to dodge the traffic cop who’d been writing her a parking ticket. Her license was suspended.