The Bronx Defenders, a public defense nonprofit, joined forces with more than a dozen criminal justice organizations on Monday to launch a coalition aimed at protecting a state law that requires the prompt sharing of evidence with defendants.
The coalition, concerned about preserving New York’s evidence-sharing requirements—known as “Kalief’s Law”—warns that lawmakers and district attorneys are seeking to weaken critical aspects of the law. Such efforts, the coalition argues, could jeopardize New Yorkers’ Sixth Amendment rights to a fair and speedy trial.
The discovery reform law, which mandates timely evidence sharing, took effect in 2020. It was inspired by the tragic story of Kalief Browder, a Bronx teenager who spent three years on Rikers Island awaiting trial, ultimately leading to his death.
Browder was falsely accused of stealing a backpack in 2011, but stronger evidence-sharing laws could have resulted in a quick dismissal of the charges, sparing him from years of abuse and the torment of solitary confinement. In 2015, at just 22 years old, Browder died by suicide.
“This is basic due process,” said Juval O. Scott, Executive Director of The Bronx Defenders. “In the Bronx, we’ve seen how timely access to evidence allows the people we represent to make fully informed decisions about their cases and holds law enforcement accountable. Rolling back this critical law would dishonor the legacy of Kalief Browder and devastate the progress we’ve made toward transparency and fairness.”
The alliance said that several elected officials, such as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, have indicated that the law may be weakened this legislative session. The law’s opponents argue that it has led to a spike in dismissals, a characterization the defenders said is misleading.
In a Center For Urban Future Fireside Chat with DA Bragg, which he posted on X, he questioned the law.
“The most significant problem with the statute is the remedy,” said DA Bragg. “If a document or documents are inadvertently not disclosed, a lot of the courts are dismissing our cases.”
State Senator Zellnor Myrie and Assembly Member Micah Laser cosponsored a new bill targeting discovery laws that would grant district attorneys access to the NYPD’s database, making it easier for them to share crucial evidence – a proposal the coalition supports because it would streamline the discovery process without limiting its requirements.
But the law makers suggested in an opinion piece published by the New York Daily News that streamlining discovery was only the beginning.
“We expect that New York’s district attorneys will seek additional changes to the discovery law this year,” Myrie and Lasher said in the article. “In light of the data, the Legislature should give their proposals serious consideration, while keeping in mind how the old system often trampled on the due process rights of defendants.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul took aim at the current discovery laws in her State of the State speech Thursday night.
“I will 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.
But Eli Northrup, Policy Director in the Bronx Defender’s Criminal Defense Practice, said the assertion that dismissals, especially for felonies, have skyrocketed is based on arrest data, rather than indictment data.
”We have a police department under this mayor that is more frequently characterizing arrests as felonies when they are not felonies,” Northrup said. “And when they make their way in front of a district attorney, they realize that.”
Members of the Alliance to Protect Kalief’s Law worry that rolling back discovery requirements will drag the state back to a time when prosecutors frequently sat on evidence until shortly before a trial, preventing defense attorneys from helping clients clear their name.
The Bronx Defenders said this could reignite issues in the Bronx, like when courts were so badly backlogged that the Bronx Defenders sued in 2016 over defendants’ court proceedings in low-level cases being delayed months, or even years in violation of their right to a speedy trial.
Northrup said that rollbacks would undermine “Kalief’s Law.”
“ It’s [the Bronx] kind of ground zero for discovery reform in many ways,” Northrup said. It has definitely positively impacted justice in the borough because individuals can see the evidence against them. They’re not blindfolded, and to roll these back, it will impact people in the Bronx in the way that it impacted Kalief Browder.”
