All prosecutors are required to hand over relevant material to defense attorneys prior to trial, a process referred to as “discovery.” Discovery is fundamental to a fair trial because it is impossible for defendants to make informed plea-bargain decisions if they do not know the strength of the evidence that prosecutors have against them.

However, New York’s 2019 discovery statute, Criminal Procedure Law Article 245 (“245”),1 has crippled the state’s criminal justice system with an untenable compliance burden that prevents it from being either just or appropriately adversarial. It has forced district attorneys’ offices to triage cases and has harmed both the victims of crime and, in the long run, many criminal offenders. The NYS Legislature can correct the systemic harms caused by 245 and increase fairness to defendants, reduce administrative burdens on police and prosecutors, and rebalance risk so that the consequences of noncompliance align with substantive impacts on due process.

New York’s new discovery rules, which went into effect in January 2020, were such an extreme and far-reaching version of “reform” that even famously progressive Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg recently complained: “My Office’s lawyers and support staff continue their herculean efforts in managing discovery-related obligations.”2 The Legal Aid Society, which represents and advocates for criminal defendants, correctly crowed that, rather than simply reinforcing prosecutors’ discovery duties, as intended, 245 “is transforming New York State’s criminal justice system.”