Public defenders say Queens DA’s evidence sharing practices violate spirit of discovery reform
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The Legal Aid Society is calling on the Queens district attorney’s office to reform its evidence sharing practices, which the attorneys say is unorganized and illogical. Eagle file photo by Jacob Kaye
By Jacob Kaye
The city’s biggest public defender group is calling on the Queens district attorney’s office to reform their evidence sharing practices, claiming that Queens prosecutors’ current practices are unorganized and illogical, effectively defeating the purpose of the state’s recently enacted discovery reform laws.
The Legal Aid Society claims that Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz and her staff have yet to create evidence sharing procedures that allow for criminal defense attorneys to easily parse through evidence being brought against their clients. While the city’s other four district attorney’s offices organize their evidence in descriptively named electronic files and have systems for naming documents, the Queens DA’s office doesn’t have a clear protocol for naming files, often sends duplicate documents and generally lacks a clear evidence sharing system, the attorneys claim.
As a result, the public defender group says its attorneys often spend hours of “unnecessary” work parsing through files and documents they receive from Katz’s office, renaming and organizing them.
Ultimately, the evidence sharing practices hinder Queens defendants’ chance at fair representation in court, in some cases more so than they did prior to the passage of New York State’s discovery reform laws nearly three years ago, the attorneys claim.
“For over two years, public defenders throughout Queens have dealt with this unfair and illogical practice, which undercuts discovery reform and contributes to court delays,” said Diana Nevins, a staff attorney with the Queens Trial Office at The Legal Aid Society.
“District Attorney offices in other boroughs have implemented evidence sharing methods that mostly square with the spirit of the landmark reform, but DA Katz has so far refused to improve her office’s practice in a way that is straightforward and efficient,” Nevins added.
The public defense group says the evidence sharing practices have impacted over 41,200 cases, including homicides, felony and misdemeanor cases where the Legal Aid Society is representing a client. In one recent felony case, Legal Aid attorneys received 3,000 unnamed discovery documents, they say.
AN EXAMPLE OF AN EVIDENCE SHARING DOCUMENT SENT TO THE LEGAL AID SOCIETY FROM THE QUEENS DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S OFFICE. SCREENSHOT VIA THE LEGAL AID SOCIETY
The state’s reformed discovery laws went into effect in 2020, speeding up the timeline in which prosecutors are required to share evidence with defense attorneys. The reforms, which have been amended twice since they first went into effect, also expanded the list of materials prosecutors were required to share.
Prior to the changes, defense attorneys said that prosecutors would wait, in some cases, until the night before a trial to share the evidence they had against a defendant. By withholding evidence until the last possible moment, prosecutors had more sway in securing plea agreements and held a tactical advantage if a case went to trial, reform advocates said.
Under the reforms, prosecutors are required to share evidence within 20 to 65 days of a defendant’s arraignment, depending on the case. However, the Legal Aid Society said prosecutors throughout the city more often than not turn over evidence closer to the 60-day mark.
Prosecutors across the state urged against the reforms and have since claimed that the new requirements have proven to be a logistical nightmare.
In an interview with the Eagle in September, Katz called the reforms “overwhelming,” and said that the new practices have led to mounting caseloads and have contributed to a rising attrition rate seen in DA’s offices across the city.
The reforms took effect the day Katz first took office in January 2020.
“Discovery [reforms] were long overdue – you have to know what the evidence is early on,” Katz said in September. “But it is extremely onerous in executing and it slows the process down.”
But the Legal Aid Society says that while the other four DA’s offices in New York City have created helpful systems for sharing evidence in the years since the reforms went into effect, the Queens DA’s office has lagged behind.
AN EXAMPLE OF AN EVIDENCE SHARING DOCUMENT SENT TO THE LEGAL AID SOCIETY FROM THE BROOKLYN DISTRICT ATTORNEY’S OFFICE. SCREENSHOT VIA THE LEGAL AID SOCIETY
In images of evidence sharing documents shared exclusively with the Eagle, files from the Queens DA’s office appear to be delineated only by numbers that don’t seem to have any connection to the specific piece of evidence the file contains. One evidence folder features dozens of files named “ECMSATTACHEDFILE,” followed by a six digit number that chronologically differentiates each file.
By contrast, images shared with the Eagle of evidence sent to the Legal Aid Society by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office break individual files up by the type of evidence. Files are contained in folders that are labeled “Body Worn Camera and Metadata,” “NYPD Paperwork” and “Video Surveillance.”
“We process materials electronically, rather than by hand, expediting the information-sharing process and enabling us to get more discovery into the hands of defense counsel sooner,” a spokesperson for the Queens district attorney’s office said in a statement to the Eagle. “Defense counsel sorts and categorizes those materials however they think is most useful to them.”
“We will continue working collaboratively with public defenders to meet the rigorous demands of discovery reform,” the spokesperson added.
The public defense group says they’ve met with prosecutors in the Queens DA’s office several times to discuss the challenges the alleged lack of organization has on their work. Following at least one of those meetings, evidence sharing practices improved for a short time, the attorneys say, however, no lasting change has been made.
“We again call on DA Katz to remedy this issue immediately to ensure that our clients aren’t deprived of the due process they deserve,” Nevins said.
