• Filed under , Appeals , Wrongful Conviction

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The Appellate Division, Second Department, today granted our firm’s appeal of the dismissal of our client Julio Negron’s Unjust Conviction or Section 8-b claim seeking damages for his 10 years’ imprisonment for an attempted murder he did not commit.  We previously won Mr. Negron a $6.25 settlement of his claims against the City of New York brought in federal court.  We will now seek a date for trial of Mr. Negron’s claim.

The Appellate Division’s decision today is an important precedent preventing the dismissal of cases like Mr. Negron’s on a mere technicality.  The State Attorney General’s office has obtained dismissals of claims such as Mr. Negron’s where the court that overturned the claimant’s original criminal conviction did not make clear the section of the Criminal Procedure Law it was acting under.  Here, in Mr. Negron’s case, the New York Court of Appeals discussed how the trial prosecutor engaged in fraudulent behavior in persuading the trial judge not to allow a defense that a third party committed the crime while concealing evidence that tended to prove the guilt of the third party.  The State Court of Claims judge dismissed the case because the Court of Appeals, in its decision, did not specify that it was relying on a subsection of Criminal Procedure Law 440.10 dealing with fraud by a prosecutor.  The Appellate Division, in its decision today, held that such a case cannot be dismissed where the claimant alleges that a prosecutor’s fraud was the basis for the previous court’s decision.  That the court that overturned the conviction did not explicitly state on what ground it was overturning the conviction cannot be a bar to the lawsuit.

Senior Associate David Rudin successfully argued the appeal. Jacob Loup, Of Counsel to the firm, wrote the firm’s opening and reply briefs. Read the decision here, our opening brief here, and our reply brief here.