A Brooklyn appellate court has ordered a new trial in a 20-year-old murder case, faulting the defendant's trial attorney for failing to provide psychiatric records to back up a claim of extreme emotional disturbance.

A unanimous decision Wednesday by the Appellate Division, Second Department, in People v. Graham, 9216/95, reversed a 2013 decision by Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice James Sullivan to deny Daryl Graham's 440 motion to set aside his 1996 second-degree murder conviction in the stabbing death of Roxanne Thomas, his ex-girlfriend.

Graham, 56, is serving a 25-years-to-life sentence in Eastern Correctional Facility. He would have been sentenced to 8 1/3 to 25 years if his extreme emotional disturbance defense had been successful.