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DEFENDANT’S MOTION TO VACATE HIS CONVICTION, BASED UPON NEWLY DISCOVERED EVIDENCE IN THE FORM OF A DECLARATION AGAINST PENAL INTEREST, SHOULD HAVE BEEN GRANTED.

The Fourth Department, reversing Supreme Court, determined defendant’s motion to vacate his conviction based upon newly discovered evidence of third party culpability should have been granted. The statement at issue was admissible as a declaration against penal interest:

As a preliminary matter, it is well settled that a “less stringent standard [of admissibility] applies, where, as here, the declaration is offered by defendant to exonerate himself rather than by the People, to inculpate him” … . Furthermore, the statements attributed to the third party “all but rule[] out a motive [for the third party] to falsify” the statement that it was he, and not defendant, who shot the victim … . Thus, in determining whether there is evidence constituting “sufficient supportive evidence of a declaration against penal interest[,] . . . [t]he crucial inquiry focuses on the intrinsic trustworthiness of the statement as confirmed by competent evidence independent of the declaration itself . . . Supportive evidence is sufficient if it establishes a reasonable possibility that the statement might be true. Whether [the hearing] court believes the statement to be true is irrelevant . . . If the proponent of the statement is able to establish this possibility of trustworthiness, it is the function of the jury alone to determine whether the declaration is sufficient to create reasonable doubt of guilt” … .

We conclude that defendant provided sufficient competent evidence at the 440.10 hearing to establish the “possibility of trustworthiness” of the third party’s statement to satisfy the requirement that the statement was a declaration against penal interest. In addition to the trial testimony that the third party was engaged in a dispute with the victim, the third party admitted to the defense investigator that he was present and engaged in a dispute with the victim and that he wrote the letters to defendant’s former attorney. Thus, we conclude that the third party is unavailable and that his alleged statement is “supported by independent proof indicating that it is trustworthy and reliable” and thus that it is a statement against penal interest … . Furthermore, the statement is “clearly exculpatory of the defendant” … . We therefore conclude that defendant met his burden of establishing, by a preponderance of the evidence … , that the third party’s statement against penal interest was not available at the time of defendant’s trial and “is of such a character as to create a probability that had such evidence been received at the trial the verdict would have been more favorable to the defendant” … . People v Mcfarland, 2017 NY Slip Op 02194, 4th Dept 3-24-17

 

CRIMINAL LAW (DEFENDANT’S MOTION TO VACATE HIS CONVICTION, BASED UPON NEWLY DISCOVERED EVIDENCE IN THE FORM OF A DECLARATION AGAINST INTEREST, SHOULD HAVE BEEN GRANTED)/EVIDENCE (DECLARATION AGAINST INTEREST, DEFENDANT’S MOTION TO VACATE HIS CONVICTION, BASED UPON NEWLY DISCOVERED EVIDENCE IN THE FORM OF A DECLARATION AGAINST INTEREST, SHOULD HAVE BEEN GRANTED)/CONVICTION, MOTION TO VACATE (DEFENDANT’S MOTION TO VACATE HIS CONVICTION, BASED UPON NEWLY DISCOVERED EVIDENCE IN THE FORM OF A DECLARATION AGAINST INTEREST, SHOULD HAVE BEEN GRANTED)/DECLARATION AGAINST INTEREST (DEFENDANT’S MOTION TO VACATE HIS CONVICTION, BASED UPON NEWLY DISCOVERED EVIDENCE IN THE FORM OF A DECLARATION AGAINST INTEREST, SHOULD HAVE BEEN GRANTED)

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