Defendants Kept in the Dark About Evidence, Until It’s Too Late
This year, the New York State Bar Association for the first time is throwing its weight behind a new Assembly bill requiring prosecutors to automatically turn over police reports, witness names
and statements, and grand jury testimony early in a case.
New York is one of 10 states where prosecutors can wait until just before trial to turn over witness names
and statements and other key evidence known as discovery, which backs up criminal charges.
If the law changes, “we’re going to see a huge increase in crime because no one’s going to cooperate,” said Scott McNamara, the district attorney of Oneida County
and the president-elect of the state district attorneys association, which has opposed changes to New York’s discovery rules.
He leads Discovery for Justice, a Bronx group founded in 2013 to oppose the discovery rules that some critics deride as New York’s “blindfold law.”
“When I was a cop, I always believed the criminal justice system was on the level,” said Mr. Berkley, who was a critic of some departmental practices
and who has four brothers who have served time in prison.
A New York State Bar Association report concluded that states with more open
systems did not have worse problems with witness intimidation than New York.
They say the restrictive discovery rules put people like Mr. Cedres into a high-stakes dilemma: Plead guilty without seeing all the evidence, or risk a trial
that could end in a prison sentence much longer than what they might get under a plea.
