A New York state judge has tossed out the felony convictions of two former Marsh & McLennan Cos. executives after finding that the state attorney general’s office had failed to turn over to the defense potentially exculpatory evidence, including some 700,000 documents obtained during a related civil proceeding.
Observing that “the courts are charged with safeguarding the integrity of the adjudicative process and the public’s confidence that verdicts are rationally based and achieved by means fair not foul,” Manhattan Supreme Court Justice James A. Yates wrote in People v. Gilman, 4800-09, that the prosecutors’ failure to exercise due diligence in searching out the material had “undermin[ed]” his “ confidence in the verdict” that he had reached after a 10-month bench trial.
