"The Appellate Division, Second Department reversed Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun's 2023 ruling and sent the case back for a new trial. The panel found that the lower court had misread the significance of the new testimony and remanded the case to Kings County for another round in front of a jury."
"At a post-conviction hearing, witness Rachel Lewis testified that she saw Julius Graves running out of the restaurant holding what looked like a long gun, and another witness took back earlier trial testimony. The appeals panel wrote that 'there is a reasonable probability that had such evidence been received at trial, the verdict would have been more favorable to the defendant.'"
"Anthony Sims was convicted in 1999, spent decades in prison, and has been free on parole since December 2022. His defense team has long argued that new witness statements point to another man and have pushed courts to revisit the original verdict."
A decades-old murder conviction in Brooklyn has been overturned by the Appellate Division, Second Department, which found that new witness testimony and recantations were significant enough to warrant a new trial. Anthony Sims was convicted in 1999 for the 1998 killing of 27-year-old Li Run Chen at Hing's Kitchen in Bushwick, allegedly over a complaint about undercooked food. At a post-conviction hearing, witness Rachel Lewis testified that she saw Julius Graves running from the restaurant with what appeared to be a long gun, and another witness recanted earlier trial testimony. The appeals panel determined there was reasonable probability that this evidence could have produced a more favorable verdict for Sims, who has been on parole since December 2022. His defense team argued investigators suffered from tunnel vision in pursuing the original conviction.
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