State lawmakers reject gov’s proposed changes to discovery law
/
Both the State Senate and State Assembly did not include Governor Kathy Hochul’s proposed changes to New York’s discovery laws in their budget proposals released on Tuesday. File photo by Matt H. Wade/Wikimedia Commons
By Jacob Kaye
Both the State Assembly and Senate rejected Governor Kathy Hochul’s attempt to rollback reforms to the state’s evidence-sharing laws on Tuesday, setting up a fight over the proposal as the deadline to pass the state budget approaches.
The governor’s proposed changes to New York’s discovery laws included in her January executive budget plan were missing from both budget responses unveiled by the Assembly and Senate this week.
The proposed changes to the criminal justice reforms passed in 2019 stood to be one of the most contentious aspects of the governor’s proposal and will likely be one of several issues at the heart of negotiations over the state’s final budget, which is due on April 1.
“The Assembly does not include the executive proposal to make various amendments to the discovery law,” the lower house’s budget proposal reads.
The State Senate’s budget proposal also left out the governor’s plan but left the possibility of changing the discovery law on the table, noting that they would be “committed” to creating “a balanced solution that ensures prosecutors fulfill their discovery obligations while also preventing the dismissal of serious cases for mere technicalities.”
A spokesperson for the governor did not respond to request for comment on the legislature’s exclusion of the proposal in their budget, and instead referred the Eagle to a comment made by Hochul to reporters on Tuesday.
“I will not be negotiating outside the room where I meet the leaders and they bring feedback from their members,” the governor said. “This is going to begin in earnest in a few days. Our teams are already speaking so I'll just leave it at that.”
After rolling back elements of the state’s bail reforms, which passed alongside discovery reform in 2019, nearly every year since taking office, the governor turned her eyes toward discovery at the start of this year.
The reforms were originally passed because prosecutors would often wait until the eve of a trial to share evidence with the defense, putting defendants at a major disadvantage. Additionally, prosecutors would game the speedy clock trial using discovery as an excuse, leaving some defendants in jail for months or years on end as a DA slowly built a case against them.
But since the reforms have been put in place, prosecutors across the state have complained that they put an increased burden on their offices. They claimed that they have been unable to keep up with the evidence-sharing demands, and that judges, acting under the reforms, have increasingly dismissed cases because of district attorneys’ discovery violations.
State data shows the DAs’ claim is partially true. While courts in New York City have seen major increases in dismissals in a handful of case types over the past four years, the dismissal rate for indicted felonies, which account for the most serious crimes, have remained virtually unchanged.
Nonetheless, Hochul said during her January State of the State address that she would propose tweaks to the laws in an effort to close the “loopholes” leading to the increase in case dismissals.
“I'll fight to finally close those loopholes that were created in our discovery laws that delay trials and lead to cases being thrown out on minor technicalities,” Hochul said at the time.
However, Hochul’s budget proposal was far more sweeping.
Under Hochul’s proposal, prosecutors would only have an obligation to turn over evidence they decide to be relevant in a case. The 2019 reforms required that all evidence be turned over to defense attorneys, regardless of whether or not prosecutors claimed it was relevant or not.
The governor’s proposal would make a handful of other changes to the reforms, including a provision for the automatic redaction of sensitive information like a witness’ address and personal data unrelated to the case in discovery documents. As it currently stands, getting permission to redact information in discovery documents can sometimes turn into a lengthy litigation process, prosecutors argue.
The governor also said she wants to change the required amount of time before prosecutors can present a defendant’s statements to a grand jury. Currently, prosecutors need to provide a 48-hour notice before the presentation of a defendant’s statements to a grand jury. Hochul wants to cut the notice time down to 24 hours.
The changes were celebrated by district attorneys across New York.
During a budget hearing before the state legislature last month, State Island District Attorney Michael McMahon, who serves as the president of the District Attorneys Association of the State of New York, said his association “supports changes to our discovery law that would help fulfill the original intent of discovery reform, to allow for early, broad disclosure to criminal defendants, so that they have all the information that they need to defend themselves, while at the same time helping to eliminate the gamesmanship and the technical dismissals that have been burdening the criminal justice system.”
Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, who recently claimed the reforms caused her office to commit 11,000 case-dismisal worthy discovery violations last year, did not respond to the Eagle’s request for comment on Tuesday.
While prosecutors have welcomed Hochul’s proposal, public defenders have not.
Groups like the Legal Aid Society claim that should Hochul’s rollbacks be put into place, the state would see a major increase in wrongful convictions, incarceration, coerced pleas and court delays.
But the groups have been critical of the reforms. The 2019 changes to discovery passed without funding, meaning that neither prosecutors nor defense groups were given additional money for the additional evidence work they were required to do under the law.
While DAs were given a funding boost in recent years, funding for public defense groups has lagged.
In a statement on Tuesday, the Legal Aid Society celebrated the legislature’s rejection of the governor’s proposal, adding that “before considering changes to the statute, lawmakers must allow the tens of millions of dollars allocated in recent years to fully take effect.”
“We implore both the Senate and Assembly to continue standing firm against the governor’s proposal, which would unravel the efforts these bodies fought so hard to enact just a few short years ago,” the public defense group said.
