Defense attorney Carlos Diaz-Cobo, left, speaks with his client Jeffrey Williams in Monmouth County Superior Court in Freehold in an August 2017 file photo.
Two separate errors by a Monmouth County judge during a murder suspect’s 2018 trial led an appeals court to overturn the man’s convictions Tuesday. Each mistake on its own would have given Jeffrey Williams a new trial in the 2017 death of Hector Mejia in Long Branch, the appeals decision says. They center on a faulty jury instruction, and a courtroom outburst by Williams that prejudiced the jury. Williams, 34, had been serving a 30-year mandatory minimum prison sentence until Tuesday. He uses the street name “Smurf.” A gunman shot Mejia, 47, on the porch of his ex-wife’s home on Liberty Street...
