{"id":138231,"date":"2026-02-19T01:02:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T01:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/138231\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T01:02:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T01:02:08","slug":"ny-jury-urged-to-acquit-suspect-in-chinatown-slayings-by-reason-of-insanity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/138231\/","title":{"rendered":"NY jury urged to acquit suspect in Chinatown slayings by reason of insanity"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was not a broken moral compass but severe mental illness that led to the 2019 killings of four men sleeping on the streets of Chinatown<\/a>, a Manhattan jury heard at closing arguments Wednesday in the quadruple murder case against Randy Santos.<\/p>\n

\u200bUrging the Manhattan Supreme Court panel to find his client not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, Marnie Zien from the Legal Aid Society said there would be no justice in holding the 31-year-old Santos criminally liable for actions he took in a state of psychosis.<\/p>\n

\u200bZien said Santos, who has diagnosed schizophrenia, was acting on the orders of menacing voices in his head when he fatally bludgeoned Chuen Kok, Nazario V\u00e1squez Villegas, Anthony Manson, and Florencio Moran<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cThe voices told him to go to Chinatown, and they told him to kill people, and that\u2019s what he did,\u201d Zien said.<\/p>\n

death<\/p>\n

\"NYPD<\/p>\n

Clarissa Sosin\/for New York Daily News<\/p>\n

NYPD and FDNY clean up the crime scenes at 2 Bowery Street and Catherine and East Broadway in Chinatown where Randy Santos, 24, allegedly bludgeoned five homeless men as they slept on Saturday, October 5, 2019. (Clarissa Sosin for New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

\u200b\u201cThe only explanation is Randy\u2019s psychosis. It\u2019s the only thing that explains what happened,\u201d the attorney later added. \u201cThere\u2019s no motive for what he did to those men.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bSantos, who is originally from the Dominican Republic and has lived in the city since his childhood, listened to Wednesday\u2019s proceedings through a Spanish interpreter, at times seen dabbing his eyes with a tissue. He has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder, one count of attempted murder, and related offenses stemming from the Oct. 5, 2019 attacks. If convicted, he faces the possibility of life in prison without parole.<\/p>\n

If found not guilty by reason of insanity, Santos will not be released, state Supreme Court Justice Laura Ward told the jury during her instruction. The case would proceed to hearings to determine whether he should be involuntarily committed to a secured, state-run facility for long-term psychiatric treatment.<\/p>\n

In the prosecution\u2019s closing argument, Assistant District Attorney Alfred Peterson said there was no dispute as to whether Santos was mentally ill, but argued his symptoms of schizophrenia were not severe enough to equate with insanity.<\/p>\n

\"RandyRandy Santos appears in court Tuesday, January 27, 2026 in Manhattan, New York, New York. (Barry Williams\/ New York Daily News)<\/p>\n

\u201cHe heard voices, he clearly had disillusions \u2014 disorganized thinking \u2026 There\u2019s no doubt he\u2019s schizophrenic,\u201d Peterson said.<\/p>\n

The prosecutor contended surveillance footage showing Santos waiting until the coast was clear before targeting some of the victims in the group \u2014 and lies he initially told police \u2014 proved \u201chis capacity to discern wrongfulness was clearly intact.\u201d He also pointed to an incident in Chelsea a week beforehand, when Santos beat with a stick a man sleeping outside before passersby stepped in to stop him.<\/p>\n

Peterson said if Santos had been truly out of his mind, he would have told police about what the voices in his head ordered him to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy didn\u2019t he say that to the police, if he was so psychotic and his delusion was so overwhelming?\u201d Paterson said. \u201cThe fact that he doesn\u2019t say that is powerful evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u200bSantos himself was homeless and had racked up a number of arrests in the years prior to the killings, with his mental illness, like that of so many defendants<\/a> who cycle through the revolving doors at 100 Centre St., going largely untreated, The News previously reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When deliberations begin Thursday, jurors will be tasked with discerning whether Santos lacked substantial capacity to appreciate the nature or circumstances of his actions were legally or morally wrong. Ward said they needed to determine a true understanding \u2014 not a surface-level one, like when a child recites information they don\u2019t fully understand \u2014 and that they could factor in Santos\u2019 extensive medical records when reaching their conclusion.<\/p>\n

Zien said Santos may have had some grasp that what he was doing was legally wrong, but on a moral level, his illness instilled in him the warped belief that others in his shoes would have done the same.<\/p>\n

The attorney took repeated aim at Jason Hershberger, a psychiatrist who testified for the prosecution, for spending less than two hours interviewing Santos before determining he knew his actions were illegal and against generally acceptable moral principles.<\/p>\n

A clinical psychologist who testified for the defense, Virginia Barber-Rioja, countered that Santos\u2019s psychosis had replaced ordinary moral judgment with the delusional belief that he had to obey the voices in his head to save his own life.<\/p>\n

Jurors heard that Rioja spoke at length with Santos and his relatives, learning of delusions he experienced in the weeks and months prior to the Chinatown killings.<\/p>\n

\u200b\u200bThe jury has heard Santos targeted the first victim near the corner of East Broadway and Catherine St., fatally battering him in the head at least seven times. He next targeted three men \u2014 killing two \u2014 huddled together under scaffolding on East Broadway near Chatham Square, according to trial evidence.<\/p>\n

Santos targeted a fifth victim up the block by Doyers St., fatally beating him with the metal bar, jurors have heard.<\/p>\n

The innocent men\u2019s horrific killings sent shockwaves through the city and shone a light on the high rates of violence people without housing are likely to encounter, whether sleeping outside or in a shelter.<\/p>\n

The jury is expected to return to court Thursday to begin deliberations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was not a broken moral compass but severe mental illness that led to the 2019 killings of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[303,266,85,75,84,83,9,24,12,63],"class_list":["post-138231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-crime","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-latest-headlines","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}