In 1998, Anthony Sims was accused of walking into a Chinese restaurant in Bushwick and blasting off a shotgun, killing Li Run Chen, an employee working the cash . 

Prosecutors argued that Sims had, after a night of drinking, shot Chen because of a heated altercation over a food order months earlier. After four days of deliberations, a jury voted to convict Sims of depraved indifference murder. He was sentenced to 25 years to life — and remains in prison to this day.

Now, over 22 years later, in a contentious wrongful-conviction hearing revisiting the case, former Brooklyn prosecutor Mark Hale, who led the state’s efforts, says he has no memory of the case he brought against Sims. 

Hale says he does not Chen, the victim who Sims allegedly left to die on a spring night in Brooklyn. 

He says he does not Julius Graves, Sims’ high school friend who was at the restaurant, whom Hale called to the stand to testify against him.

He says he does not his closing argument, though it helped send Sims to prison.

That’s what Hale, who led the Brooklyn DA’s wrongful-conviction unit until his retirement last year, told a court on Wednesday during a hearing in which Sims’ attorneys tried to get to the bottom of what Hale knew and when he knew it. 

For more than an hour, as one of Sims’ attorneys grilled him, Hale repeated variations of a go-to refrain, “Sir, I have no memory of this case.” 

Today, Sims, who didn’t testify at his original trial, says that Graves was the real killer, an argument his original defense attorney tried to make for him at the time.

Sims’ current lawyers argue that Brooklyn prosecutors deprived their client of a fair trial by failing to turn over evidence that would have implicated Graves and bolstered the defense’s version of the events leading to Chen’s murder. The actions, or inactions, of Hale and his colleagues go to the heart of Sims’ ongoing challenge to his decades-old guilty verdict.

During the original trial, Sims’ attorneys were never told about an alleged eyewitness whose story undermined that of the prosecution. The witness initially told police she had been unable to see anything, according to an NYPD report. But in a court hearing earlier this month, she said that eventually before the trial she called a detective and made clear that she saw Graves, not Sims, running out of the Chinese restaurant with a gun. 

This purported call was not documented in any police records at the time. But an NYPD report from the investigation did memorialize an interview, which Sims’ attorneys say corroborate the witness’ present-day . The report refers to the witness’ claims that Graves, not Sims, was the person that shot Chen.

Sims’ attorneys contend that the NYPD document was never turned over to Sims’ defense team, who were thus unable to reach out to the witness and put her conflicting testimony before the jury.

At the hearing more than 22 years later, Hale said he had no memory of the witness, making it impossible for Sims’ defense attorneys to ascertain if he knew about that undisclosed police report at the time.

Because of his alleged lack of memory, Hale also evaded potential questions about actions by the Kings County District Attorney’s Office, which Sims’ attorneys argue unfairly inflated Graves’ credibility. 

Graves was a convicted felon on probation for a handgun possession. For three years, he had violated his probation by failing to report to and fill out paperwork for his probation officer. Sims, on the other hand, was an “engaged father of two” with a steady job and no criminal record, according to a recent memo filed by his defense team.

But prosecutors did not disclose this information to the defense at the time, according to a court filing by Sims’ current lawyers. And at trial Graves falsely testified that he had reported to his probation officer “often and regularly.”

Sims’ attorneys point out that Hale failed to correct this testimony, though Hale’s answers at Wednesday’s hearing make it impossible to know if he was aware of Graves’ history at the time.

In response to a question about the alleged false testimony, a spokesperson for the Kings County District Attorney’s Office noted that prosecutors did not get a chance to prepare or speak to Graves before his testimony because he took off to North Carolina before being brought back to testify. 

Sims’s then-partner itted in a sworn statement that she paid the bus fare for Graves’ trip, causing the trial to be suspended until his return, court documents show.

Years after his time in the District Attorney’s homicide bureau, Hale went on to lead the office’s conviction review unit. In 2016, Sims applied to that unit to have his case reinvestigated. His application was rejected, though the District Attorney’s office maintains that Hale recused himself from the review.

Outside the courtroom, Hale declined to comment on Sims’ case or any others over his career, at least two of which have also sparked allegations of undisclosed materials and prosecutorial misconduct.

In the coming weeks, both sides are expected to call other witnesses and submit additional court filings before hearing a decision from Judge Danny Chun about the fate of Sims’ conviction.