A Brooklyn murder case that dates back to the late 1990s is suddenly wide open again, after a state appeals court on Wednesday tossed the conviction and ordered what amounts to a legal do-over.
The court overturned a decades-old murder conviction and granted a new trial in the 1998 killing, saying that fresh witness accounts and recantations were strong enough that they could have changed what the jury decided the first time around.
As reported by Yahoo, the Appellate Division, Second Department reversed Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Danny Chun’s 2023 ruling and sent the case back for a new trial. The panel found that the lower court had misread the significance of the new testimony and remanded the case to Kings County for another round in front of a jury.
The victim was 27-year-old Li Run Chen, who prosecutors say was shot inside Hing’s Kitchen in Bushwick on May 18, 1998, after a confrontation over a complaint that his food was undercooked, according to reporting by the New York Daily News. Anthony Sims was convicted in 1999, spent decades in prison, and has been free on parole since December 2022. His defense team has long argued that new witness statements point to another man and have pushed courts to revisit the original verdict.
New testimony prompted the reversal
At a post-conviction hearing, witness Rachel Lewis testified that she saw Julius Graves running out of the restaurant holding what looked like a long gun, and another witness took back earlier trial testimony. The appeals panel wrote that “there is a reasonable probability that had such evidence been received at trial, the verdict would have been more favorable to the defendant.” Sims’ lawyers cast the decision as vindication and accused investigators of classic tunnel vision, according to the New York Daily News.
Prosecutors have maintained that the killing grew out of the earlier argument and that Sims walked into Hing’s Kitchen with a shotgun, then left with other passengers who later testified against him. One of the men identified in later filings, Graves, has not been charged in the case but has admitted in court papers that he wiped fingerprints from the weapon, a detail defense lawyers leaned on when pushing for a new hearing. Yahoo summarized the appellate panel’s findings and the trial record.
What the ruling means in court
The Appellate Division is authorized to review trial court decisions and, when warranted, to reverse and send cases back for more proceedings, including a new trial if new evidence could reasonably have led to a different outcome. A remand returns the case to Kings County Supreme Court for scheduling, pretrial motions, and decisions about what evidence the next jury will hear. The court’s website explains the Second Department’s role in deciding appeals and how remanded cases move forward in the system. Appellate Division, Second Department
Brooklyn prosecutors say they are reviewing the ruling and will decide whether to retry Sims; if they do, the case heads back into Brooklyn courtrooms for pretrial maneuvering and witness preparation. Graves remains uncharged, but could draw renewed attention if prosecutors pursue a different theory or develop new evidence. Sims’ lawyers say the decision ends what they describe as a 28-year nightmare for their client and puts the question of guilt back where they believe it belongs, in front of a jury instead of resting on a trial record that is now more than two decades old.
