What to Know
- A New Jersey man’s murder conviction has been tossed after an appeals court ruled some evidence shouldn’t have been shown at his trial.
- A jury convicted Charles Grant of the 2015 murder of Isaac “Blaze” Tucker on a Paterson street
- No one witnessed the slaying, and at Grant’s trial prosecutors relied on surveillance videos and the testimony of an acquaintance of Grant’s who said Grant admitted killing Tucker.
A New Jersey man’s murder conviction has been tossed after an appeals court ruled some evidence shouldn’t have been shown at his trial.
A jury convicted Charles Grant of the 2015 murder of Isaac “Blaze” Tucker on a Paterson street, and he is serving a life sentence. No one witnessed the slaying, and at Grant’s trial prosecutors relied on surveillance videos and the testimony of an acquaintance of Grant’s who said Grant admitted killing Tucker.
They also showed jurors a video of an interrogation of Grant in which a detective accused him of lying and stated that surveillance video clearly showed he had a gun.
Get Tri-state area news and weather forecasts to your inbox. Sign up for NBC New York newsletters.
The appeals court ruled Tuesday that those portions of the video shouldn’t have been shown during the trial because they offered opinions about the evidence, a task for the jury to undertake.
“Although police may use psychological methods such as trickery and deception in attempting to obtain a confession, to be admissible at trial, statements by an interrogating detective must still comply with the rules of evidence and not deny the defendant a right to a fair trial,” the court wrote.
The Passaic County prosecutor’s office, which tried the case, was reviewing the ruling and considering its options, a spokesperson said Tuesday.
