ETKS Partner, Brian Shiffrin, filed a 440 motion to set aside the verdict convicting Jenise Haddad-Smith of Attempted Second Degree Murder.
The prosecution claimed Haddad-Smith cut her husband’s neck while he was lying in bed in March 2010.
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After being cut, Todd Smith was able to get outside where he yelled in the street that she had stabbed him. Police found Haddad-Smith inside with allegedly self-inflicted stab wounds, including an abdominal wound that required removal of her spleen.
She testified her husband attacked her and he was cut during a struggle over the knife.
Haddad-Smith has claimed her husband stabbed her behind her left armpit, a spot where the wound could not be self-inflicted. She has claimed there are holes in the shirts she was wearing at the time of the attack that line up precisely with a wound behind her left armpit.
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[Shiffrin is] claiming ineffective assistance of counsel because her trial attorney, George Aney, never examined the shirts and failed to call an expert witness to testify about the wound behind her armpit.
During his oral argument on the 440 motion last year, Shiffrin asked Oneida County Court Judge Michael L. Dwyer to examine the clothing himself before ruling, but Dwyer declined.
Haddad-Smith appealed to the Fourth Department, which released a memorandum and order Friday to “reserve decision and remit the matter to County Court for a limited hearing on the issue relating to the location of the holes in the shirts.”
Read the entire Daily Record Article here.
