Kogut v. County of Nassau, No. 13-3130 (2d Cir. 2015)
Annotate this CasePlaintiff was convicted of rape and murder in 1986 and later acquitted of those charges in 2005. Plaintiff filed suit for, inter alia, due process violations and malicious prosecution under 42 U.S.C. 1983 against the County and NCPD. Plaintiff's claims were tried jointly with two other individuals whose convictions for the rape and murder of the same victim had also been vacated. The jury found in favor of defendants and plaintiff appealed. The district court denied plaintiff's motion for a separate trial on the ground that the statements attributed to the other two plaintiffs were admissible not on the issue of whether the detectives had probable cause to prosecute plaintiff but rather on the lack-of-malice element of plaintiff's malicious prosecution claim. Therefore, the district court's ruling that corroborating statements were made relevant to the malice element of plaintiff's malicious prosecution claim was not error. There was no abuse of discretion in the district court's conclusion that the introduction of statements that were relevant on the issue of malice, and most of which did not explicitly or implicitly mention plaintiff, did not unfairly prejudice him. The court rejected plaintiff's remaining contentions and affirmed the judgment.
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