*1 APPEAL by the People, as limited by their brief, from so much of an order of the Supreme Court (ShawnDya L. Simpson, J.), dated April 14, 2014, and entered in Kings County, as, after a hearing, granted that branch of the defendant’s motion which was pursuant to CPL 440.10(1)(g) to vacate a judgment of the same court (Gloria Goldstein, J.) rendered December 14, 1992, convicting him of murder in the second degree and assault in the first degree, upon a jury verdict, and imposing sentence, and for a new trial, on the ground of newly discovered evidence.*2
OPINION & ORDERThe defendant in this case has remained behind bars for more than two decades for a crime that he has consistently maintained he did not commit. The Supreme Court, on the basis of newly discovered evidence, vacated the defendant’s judgment of conviction and ordered a new trial.The People have appealed from the Supreme Court’s order. While the issues implicated by this case represent some of the most pressing and contentious matters facing the criminal justice system today, the People have chosen to focus their appeal on an array of procedural and evidentiary arguments, largely ignoring the major underlying issues at stake.But these rules of procedure and evidence are not to be invoked for their own sake. They do not exist solely as an arsenal to be ranged against the accused or the imprisoned. They exist so that truth may emerge from their considered application. Indeed, it requires no earth-shattering pronouncement to state simply what centuries of jurisprudence make clear: that justice is the whole of the law.And although our institutions of law enforcement are the bedrock of our system of justice, they do not deserve our blind faith or allegiance. When we succumb to that temptation we abdicate our duty to ensure that justice is done in every case and under every circumstance. Society’s allegiance and faith must be earned through our labors and consistently reaffirmed by our decisions. Recognition of our errors does not make our system weak, it makes it resilient. When we ignore our errors or seek to avoid confronting them, we imperil the very foundations of our legitimacy.In this case, the Supreme Court determined that evidence of prior police misconduct, if known to the court and the jury, would have created a probability of a more favorable verdict to the defendant. As such, the trial court acted appropriately when it vacated the conviction and ordered a new trial. For the gravest manner of injustice that we know is the imprisonment of a fellow human being for a crime that he or she did not commit.
