An evidentiary hearing may be the best place to sort out allegations from a man serving a 35-year prison sentence for child pornography that his attorney and mother were having a sexual relationship, a federal appeals court said Monday.

A panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected Jonathan DeLaura’s claim that he received ineffective assistance from Gary Greenwald, an Orange County lawyer who died of cancer last year and was allegedly seeing DeLaura’s mother.