A judge’s denial of defendant’s CPL §440.10 motion to vacate his conviction for murdering his wife was not disturbed by a state appeals court, though the dissenting justice said the defendant should have gotten a hearing.

Blazej Kot was convicted of slashing the throat of his wife, Caroline Coffey, in 2009 while the two were jogging, then attempting to burn down the couple’s residence in Ithaca to hide the slaying. He was a doctoral student at Cornell and she a post-doctoral cancer researcher.