Stock photos of a toddler swing and police lights.

By Michael Mashburn From Daily Voice

A Long Island man who got stuck in a toddler swing and fought a police officer while drunk is back in court after New York’s top judges revived the case.

The Court of Appeals ruled 5–2 this week that Suffolk County DA Raymond Tierney’s office did nothing wrong when it briefly held back an Internal Affairs report about the cop in the bizarre case against Henry Fuentes.

Fuentes, prosecutors say, was drunk when he plopped into a kiddie swing and got stuck in 2021. He called 911 for help. A Suffolk cop showed up, offered him an ambulance and even a ride home.

But once there, Fuentes allegedly demanded his tequila back. When the officer refused, prosecutors say he shoved her into the car, grabbed her keys, and jumped behind the wheel before backup swarmed in.

The case looked dead in 2022 after a lower court judge tossed it, blasting prosecutors for not handing over a police Internal Affairs Bureau report tied to an unrelated federal lawsuit against the officer. The report actually cleared her of wrongdoing, but Fuentes’ defense claimed the delay violated his rights.

That sparked years of appeals, attracting attention from the Legal Aid Society and the state’s DA Association. In the end, the Court of Appeals said the report had no real value and prosecutors had already turned over enough information.

The ruling clears the way for the case to resume and Fuentes to face misdemeanor charges in Suffolk County District Court.

In a statement Thursday, Oct. 23, Tierney blasted discovery reforms passed by state lawmakers in 2020, arguing they have buried prosecutors in paperwork battles.

“The near-four year pathway of a misdemeanor prosecution to the highest court in the state over a mind-numbing technical attack just shows how the state’s 2020 so-called discovery ‘reforms’ have tied up valuable prosecution resources and unleashed destabilizing chaos on our criminal justice system,” Tierney said.

“The fact that the state’s prosecutors are compelled to engage in clerical advocacy more than legal advocacy against a flood of never-ending ‘gotcha’ technicalities, enabled by our state government, is nothing short of a public safety tragedy.”