Appeal of Mazoltuv Borukhova murder conviction raises hearsay evidence issue

4.2.12 WC: 191694 Mazoltuv Borukhova In February 2011, I argued the appeal of Mazoltuv Borukhova, whose murder conviction became the basis of Janet Malcolm’s best seller, Iphigenia in Forest Hills: Anatomy of a Murder Trial. Borukhova, a young doctor who recently immigrated from Bukhara in the former Soviet Union, was involved in a hotly contested divorce and custody suit with her dentist husband, who had also immigrated from Bukhara. Mazoltuv was accused of hiring a cousin from the State of Georgia to come up to Queens and murder her husband. She was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. The major issue on appeal was similar to the one that resulted in the reversal of Sandra Murphy’s conviction, namely a hearsay statement, testified to by the murder victim’s father, describing a statement allegedly made by the murder victim that suggested he feared being killed by his estranged wife. The court ruled that this statement should not have been admitted into evidence, but that the other evidence presented to the jury was so overwhelming, that the error of admitting the hearsay was “harmless’”—that means that the jury would have convicted Borukhova even if they had never heard this inadmissible evidence. Appellate courts are not really in a good position to evaluate what a jury would have concluded if certain evidence had been excluded. The case is now on habeus corpus. 394 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017481