Morales v. Portuondo
United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
154 F. Supp. 2d 706 (S.D.N.Y. 2001)
Jose Morales (defendant) and Ruben Montalvo were convicted of murdering Jose Antonio Rivera, but shortly afterward Jesus Fornes confessed to four different people — a priest, Montalvo's mother, Morales's attorney, and Legal Aid attorney Stanley Cohen — that he, not Morales or Montalvo, had committed the murder; Fornes then refused to testify at a hearing on a motion to set aside the verdict, and the priest and Cohen refused to testify based on privilege, while the other statements were hearsay. Fornes died in an unrelated accident in 1997, and in 2001 Morales filed a habeas petition, calling the priest and Cohen as witnesses and arguing he was denied due process by being unable to present Fornes's confessions in his defense.
Whether inadmissible evidence may be admitted if its exclusion would render a criminal defendant's trial fundamentally unfair.