A New York appeals court called for a hearing into whether death threats against David Lou’s defense attorney during his 1992 murder trial caused Lou to receive ineffective assistance of counsel.
Lou was convicted in 1992 of the shooting death of a taxi driver in Queens, New York. His defense attorney, Thomas Ognibene, revealed 18 years later that he had received death threats from people claiming to be representatives of the “real killer.” The threats said that if Ognibene continued to look for witnesses to prove Lou’s innocence, Ognibene’s life “would be at risk.”
Lou’s new attorneys want to vacate his conviction based on ineffective assistance of counsel because Ognibene stopped investigating potential defense witnesses. The trial court in Queens dismissed the motion without a hearing but the appeals court said that was a mistake and directed the trial court to hold an evidentiary hearing on the merits of Lou’s claims.
Read the Reuters story here.
