Kinky jurors beware!
Both Manhattan federal prosecutors and lawyers representing two men charged in a sick plot to rape and murder women and children in connection to the NYPD’s infamous cannibal cop case want to know the deepest, darkest sexual fetishes of prospective jurors tapped for the Feb. 24 trial.
“Have you ever visited the website darkfetishnet.com, or viewed any other books, magazines, movies, television programs or internet sites that relate to sexual fetishes or fantasies,” jurors are asked in a proposed questionnaire submitted to Manhattan federal Judge Paul Gardephe Friday.
The notorious DarkFetish site – where users notoriously fantasize about people being tortured and killed – was a favorite of NYPD “cannibal cop” Gilberto Valle and allegedly where former Stuyvesant HS librarian Christopher Asch and his alleged co-conspirator Michael Van Hise hooked up.
Among other questions prospective jurors are expected to be asked in the questionnaire for Asch and Van Hise’s trial is whether they or close family or friends have been victims of sex crimes and if there’s “anything” they’ve “seen, heard or read about with regard to sexual fantasies or fetishes that would make it difficult for [them] to render a fair and impartial verdict.”
Meanwhile, Van Hise, 23, and Asch, 62, have taken steps to make sure they’re not done in by God-loving jurors.
Their lawyers in legal filings Friday proposed that prospective jurors also be asked in open court what their religion is and “how often [they] attend a place of worship?”
“Do you have any personal, religious or philosophical beliefs that would interfere with your ability to deliberate or otherwise serve as a juror,” the lawyers said they want prospective jurors to be asked.
Asch and Richard Meltz — an ex-chief of police at the US Dept. of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Bedford, Mass — were busted in 2013 during the feds’ probe of Van Hise, who was a cohort of Valle.
Asch and Meltz offered to help Van Hise when he said he wanted his wife, sister-in-law and sister-in-law’s kids raped and murdered, the feds say.
Meltz last month pleaded guilty. The case grew out of an investigation into Valle, who was convicted last year of a plot to kidnap, cook and eat women.