Many of these old, half-forgotten details came to the fore at the Tuesday hearing after the case was upended by an appellate court on Feb. 7. In a unanimous decision, the Second Judicial Department Appeals Court tossed out Mr. Giuca’s conviction, ruling that under Mr. Hynes, the district attorney’s office had badly bungled how it handled Mr. Avitto on the witness stand. The office, now run by a new district attorney, Eric Gonzalez, was asked how it planned to proceed with the case. Mr. Gonzalez followed the trail blazed by his predecessors. He decided to appeal the court’s ruling and, if necessary, to retry Mr. Giuca.

Everyone in court that day looked older. Arriving from a holding cell on Rikers Island, Mr. Giuca, now 34, was brought into the room wearing a blazer a size too big for him and the vacant gaze of a man who, as Mr. Bederow told the judge, was on the 4,806th day of his imprisonment. Though his mother, Ms. Giuliano, also looked haggard, she remained unbent. (During the proceeding, she shouted at the reporters in the jury box: “He’s innocent!”) Sitting across the aisle from her, Mr. Fisher’s parents barely spoke, radiating an undiminished grief.

Missing from the hearing was Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi, the former trial prosecutor, who had left the district attorney’s office several months ago for a new job starring as herself in the TV crime series “True Conviction.” In her place, another prosecutor, Joseph Alexis, asked Justice Danny K. Chun to keep Mr. Giuca in custody while the office sought to vacate his appeal.

The request seemed to enrage Mr. Bederow, who stepped up to the podium and wondered aloud how the district attorney planned to pursue a new trial. One of their witnesses, Ms. McCulloch, had recanted, he said. Another, Mr. Avitto, had been thoroughly discredited by the appeals court. That left Mr. Cleary, who, Mr. Bederow went on, was “a devious liar” with a questionable connection to Mr. Hynes. As for Ms. DiPietro, Mr. Bederow said he doubted that the prosecutors would call her as a witness, considering that she now worked in their office. “There is no path to victory for the D.A.,” he maintained.

But Justice Chun disagreed and ordered Mr. Giuca to be taken back to jail as yet another court decided his fate. Before the hearing ended, the judge suggested a tentative date for trial in early May. Mr. Bederow requested May 1. “We want the quickest trial possible,” he said.

Then it was over and, in a familiar scene, two court officers handcuffed Mr. Giuca and took him away.