17.29 - B. Third-Party Culpability Evidence

• Jurisdiction: New York

B. Third-Party Culpability Evidence

“Only rarely have we held that the right to present a complete defense was violated by the exclusion of defense evidence under a state rule of evidence.”²⁸¹⁵ But,

no other statement is so much against [penal] interest as a confession of murder; it is far more calculated to convince than dying declarations, which would be let in to hang a man; and when we surround the accused with . . . safeguards, . . . we ought to give him the benefit of a fact that, if proved, commonly would have such weight. ²⁸¹⁶

Conceptually speaking, it is arguable that a defense of third-party culpability starts here, although the word “defense” as used here is not defined in the Penal Law. “Evidence tending to show that another party might have committed the crime would be admissible” provided there was “a train of facts or circumstances as tend clearly to point out someone besides the prisoner as the guilty party.”²⁸¹⁷ It is not “a clear link” because a clear link would focus on the third party’s guilt or innocence rather than the effect of the evidence on the defendant’s culpability, to wit: whether the third-party culpability evidence offered would create a reasonable doubt as to the defendant’s guilt. It is not a “tendency” that inheres. A tendency does not “inhere.” A tendency relates to the weight and credibility of evidence.²⁸¹⁸ A defendant does not have to actually prove that another person “really” committed the crime charged. He doesn’t have to prove anything. If credited, his third-party culpability evidence might equal reasonable doubt.²⁸¹⁹ Syllogistic logic is not evidence the law calls third-party culpability evidence. Such evidence looks to reasonable doubt. Alibi evidence raises credibility issues, arguably confuses a jury, by raising a reasonable doubt where none existed before. In many a murder case, alibi is third-party culpability evidence turned inside out. If the defendant wasn’t there, then some third person must have done it.

There is no requirement of a “direct link” between proffered third-party culpability evidence and the crime charged. It is not the difference between direct and circumstantial evidence.

Just as the law allows a . . . defendant to be convicted by circumstantial evidence, it cannot prevent the same defendant from establishing a third party’s “direct connection” to a crime by a similar use of evidence. Reason and experience do not support the proposition that “direct connection” evidence “occupies a special or exotic category of proof.”

. . . .

[J]uries are routinely instructed that a “reasonable doubt” is “. . . a doubt which has a foundation in the evidence or lack of evidence.”. . . There is no legal requirement that third party culpability evidence must rise to the level of probable cause in order to generate reasonable doubt. Evidence implicating a third person . . . can . . . fall short of establishing probable cause

...