An optimist will look at the “deal” of the discovery that Gov. Hochul with the New York legislative power struck during budget negotiations and points to some “victories”.
Yes, language adjustments must now somewhat narrow the amount of worthless ‘proof’ officers, some of their time pressure must quickly collect and mitigate.
Officers of Justice will also have a certain leeway to summarize pieces of evidence that they are still working on – even if they have not received their mittens in the assigned time.
And judges can now assess the dedication of the public prosecutor in this collection by evaluating the “totality” of their efforts – and not, more granularly, measuring their zeal in scrowning “Item for item” for each individual document, video, piece of metadata, etc.
Provided that judges are willing to use these new wide buddies in favor of the prosecution, these shifts are good.
They can help the NYC-Case-Dismissal percentage fall from 62%, back to the 42% rate before the extreme 2020 discoveries legislation.
In theory, this could help increase the conviction rate of his terrible current 26% to the former 47% percentage.
Other positive tweaks set more responsible lawyers to do well.
The bill is expanding their obligation to thoroughly revise evidence, to obtain proof of evidence and to be more specific and together if they claim that evidence is missing.
The amended law also restores a shade of more confidentiality for information such as witness home addresses. And it makes Grand-Jury Planning reasonable.
Legislation for defendants
However, a realist will look at this deal and say: Hochul asked for far too little and got less.
The Discovery Regime of New York will remain the most favored nation of the nation towards the defendants and the most wasting tax money and public clerk Manours.
Public prosecutors will still have to have their caseloads triage, paralyzed by what remains an unreasonable compliance with.
This causes less right to the victims of crime – in particular “lower level” – crime such as domestic violence and drunk driving – and also that criminals will endure inconsistent and random results.
The positive but marginal improvements in this bill create a political reality in which New York will not re-assess our radical pro-criminal rules for collecting evidence for many moons.
In a state where “progressive” legislators are even further dominated by their AOC-Ador staff employees, these modest improvements in New York’s Discovery Act are something to celebrate.
But the reality that Albany is ruled by an ideological aversion to imposing criminal consequences for those who violate the law remains a big downer.
Hannah E. Meyers is a fellow and the director of police and public safety at the Manhattan Institute.
