Albany to crime victims: Drop dead

New York’s Legislature does not care about domestic violence victims.That’s what the state Senate and Assembly signaled last week when they omitted from their budget drafts any amendments to New York’s radical, unjust discovery law.The 2020 discovery statute created the largest unnecessary compliance burden on prosecutors in the entire nation — sharply advantaging criminal defendants over crime victims.The law enumerates types of evidence (known as “discovery” material) assistant district attorneys must collect, review and share with defense attorneys within very narrow time frames.Otherwise, their cases are dismissed.Unfortunately for victims, the definition of “evidence” now includes anything remotely connected to a case — even if it’s completely irrelevant or redundant.This has led to skyrocketing dismissal rates as defense attorneys play “gotcha” and scrounge up meaningless bits of “evidence” prosecutors missed.It’s denied justice to tens of thousands of crime victims.In 2019, prior to the law, only 5% of cases prosecuted in New York City criminal court were dismissed because prosecutors couldn’t meet their compliance burden in time.But the new threshold is impossible to meet; by last year, these forced dismissals had risen a simply shocking 455%.That’s right: around 50,000 cases — nearly a third of the total — were dismissed because defense attorneys successfully claimed prosecutors hadn’t met the stupid and unattainable new definition of compliance.It’s been absolutely disastrous for domestic violence victims, whose cases are particularly vulnerable to these baloney dismissals.Prosecutors, attempting to prevent dismissals, are so overwhelmed with chasing meaningless “evidence” that they are forced simply to decline to prosecute 26% more domestic violence arrests than in 2019.Stomach this: A tragic two out of five NYC domestic violence victims now have their cases either dismissed or declined.One of these victims w...