During his trial, Robinson’s attorneys argued that it was Jermaine Robinson who committed the murder. They pointed to the fact that he had been previously convicted of criminally negligent homicide, and that he had allegedly abused Samuels in the past. Jermaine Robinson denied the allegation.

The jury didn’t buy the mistaken identity argument and found Robinson guilty of murdering Samuels in 1994.

Robinson quickly got to work on an appeal and told a panel of judges in the Appellate Division, Second Department in 1997 that his trial had been tainted by prosecutorial misconduct. His conviction was upheld.

Two years later he attempted another appeal, but a Queens judge denied the motion.

Robinson then went to the federal courts, where a judge denied his habeas corpus motion but said a Queens judge should review Robinson’s claim that he had an ineffective lawyer during his trial. The motion was later denied in Queens Criminal Court.

It wasn’t until 2013, as Robinson approached the end of his sentence, that he discovered the evidence that would lead to the vacatur of his conviction.

After submitting a Freedom of Information request, Robinson received a box of items related to his case. Among the items inside was a police report that indicated that there was additional DNA evidence not presented at trial, including blood stains, hair and nail scrapings.

Though a Queens judge rejected Robinson’s request to have the DNA tested, the appellate court later reversed the decision.

But then another roadblock emerged – Robinson and his attorneys were told that the evidence they were looking for no longer existed. It had been lost when the building it was being held in sustained damage during Hurricane Sandy, they were told.

But after two years of hearings to determine whether the damaged evidence could still be tested safely, the Queens district attorney’s office told the judge that the evidence was actually not in the flooded facility, but instead with the office of the chief medical examiner.

Though the OCME tested the evidence and said they could not rule out that male DNA found in Samuels’ fingernail scrapings belonged to Robinson, a private lab reached a different conclusion. The lab, Cybergenetics, determined that it was 78 trillion times more likely that Robinson was not the killer, a finding the OCME, which conducted further testing, later agreed with.

Armed with the results, Robinson asked a Queens judge to vacate his conviction.

His motion was denied.

Then, in 2023, around four years after he had completed his sentence, the Appellate Division, Second Department found the judge had improperly rejected the motion, ruling that Robinson had been wrongly convicted.

At the time, Robinson told the Eagle that the ruling was “a long-awaited decision that we’ve been looking for for 30-plus years.”

In addition to the DNA evidence, the appeals judges said Marchon’s testimony, which made up the entirety of the evidence against Robinson presented at trial, was shaky.

She had trouble identifying Robinson in a line up and again at his trial.

“Under the facts of the case, it would not have been unreasonable to conclude that Marchon confused Samuels’s estranged husband with her current boyfriend in making her identification to the police,” the ruling read.

Though Robinson told the Eagle at the time that he was hopeful the wrongful conviction ruling would put an end to his case, he was wrong.

The Queens district attorney’s office asked the Court of Appeals to reverse the Appellate Division decision, but the top court refused to take up the case.

Six months after the conviction was overturned, Queens prosecutors said they would retry Robinson for the 1993 murder.

In the three years that have followed, Robinson, his attorneys, prosecutors and members of Samuels’ family have appeared in Queens Criminal Court 25 times in preparation for the trial. In all, Robinson has appeared in the court on Queens Boulevard over 110 times.

Jury selection in the upcoming trial is expected to begin toward the end of next week.

Whether or not the trial provides a true conclusion to the case remains to be seen.

“It’s been a long journey,” Robinson told the Eagle in 2023. “I’m just waiting to get over this last hump.”