NY pols want to tweak 2019 reforms on how prosecutors share evidence to avoid dismissals

The state legislature could change how prosecutors share evidence with defense lawyers in criminal cases, after district attorneys griped that so-called reforms passed in 2019 are leading to more dismissals.State Sen.Zellnor Myrie (D-Brooklyn) and Assemblyman Micha Lasher (D-Manhattan) are introducing bills that would give defense lawyers the ability to access some law-enforcement systems to directly obtain such information as police reports in the discovery process.This would mean they wouldn’t have to go through prosecutors as they currently do, thus cutting down on the lengthy and sometime labor-intensive handing-over of evidence — a process that can jeopardize a case if it takes too long.“The discovery reforms we passed in 2019 were meant to improve defendants’ access to evidence and other materials that could be used against them,” said Myrie, a candidate for New York City mayor, in a statement.With the proposed tweaks in the law, “I believe we can achieve that goal while ensuring prosecutors are able to try cases on the merits, rather than seeing charges dismissed on procedural grounds,” he said.“Our legislation aims to reduce the administrative burdens on law enforcement while continuing to protect defendants’ due process rights.”The revised discovery process was passed alongside the state’s hotly controversial bail-law changes in 2019.

It requires prosecutors to turn over evidence to a defense lawyer within 20 days of a defendant’s arraignment if they’re being held in custody and 35 days if they’re released.When a growing number of cases started being dismissed because of the time rules, the 2019 changes were amended in 2022 to try and make it harder to dismiss a case because a prosecutor didn’t comply with discovery.But Myrie points out that case dismissals are still higher than before the statutes went into effect.Criminal case dismissals in New York City have gone up from 41% before discovery reform to 62% today, according t...