Some of the most fundamental constitutional rights that lie at the heart of the American justice system actually have their origin in a document signed by an English king nearly 800 years ago. This document is the Magna Carta, which King John reluctantly signed at the insistence of his barons in June 1215. The 63 chapters of the Magna Carta granted certain “liberties” to “all the free men of our realm for ourselves and our heirs for ever. ” Chief among the liberties granted by the Magna Carta is what we today view as the right to due process of law. Chapter 39 of the Magna Carta, which forms the cornerstone of this right, decreed that “ No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned, disseized, outlawed, banished, nor will We proceed against or prosecute him, except by the lawful judgment of his Peers or by the Law of the land.” It is from this chapter of the Magna Carta that the framers of our Bill of Rights derived the Fifth Amendment guarantee that no person “shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” The 14th Amendment similarly protects against the deprivation of these basic individual rights by any action of state government that does not comport with due process, and thus also rests upon Chapter 39 of the Magna Carta.
The right to due process, historically derived from the liberties granted by the Magna Carta, was the foundation for the Appellate Division, Second Department’s 2014 opinion in People v. Hamilton, 115 A.D.3d 12. In Hamilton, the Second Department, over which I preside, held that a “freestanding” claim of actual innocence may serve as a ground to vacate a criminal conviction under CPL 440.10(1)(h). In recognizing such a claim for the first time at the appellate level, my colleague Justice Sylvia Hinds-Radix, who authored the opinion, wrote on behalf of the court that “it is abhorrent to our sense of justice and fair play that someone innocent of a crime may be incarcerated or otherwise punished for a crime which he or she did not commit.”
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