State v. Patel

Amicus brief arguing against the State’s position that there should be a general rule that if a defendant had possession of control of a document before or during the trial and failed to produce it at trial, he cannot get a new trial based on newly discovered evidence.

This case raises requires the Court to review the application of the legal standard for deciding when a person convicted of a crime is entitled to a new trial based on newly-discovered evidence. Our amicus brief argues against the State’s position that a defendant cannot get a new trial if the newly discovered evidence was in their possession of control before or during the trial and failed to produce it at trial. The brief urges the Court to rule that (1) the court’s assessment should be guided by the fundamental concern of ensuring that innocent people are not convicted and that a new trial usually should be ordered if exculpatory evidence is sufficiently material and robust so as to likely have changed the jury’s verdict if the defendant merely inadvertently did not discover the evidence pretrial; and (2) the “truthfulness” of the new evidence is for the jury to determine, once the trial court has determined that it was of the sort that would probably have changed the verdict.