State budget talks: Lawmakers come to deal on discovery before breaking for holiday weekend
Apr. 17—ALBANY — Progress seems to have been made on changes to the state's discovery laws in the after hours of Wednesday as budget negotiations continued.
Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie, D-Bronx, told Spectrum News Capitol Tonight reporter Kate Lisa Wednesday night that "discovery's done," after a meeting with the Senate majority leader and Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul.
Albany's leaders do not discuss specifics of the deals they reach in private regarding policy until the entire budget package is completed and presented to the state legislature for a vote.
Heastie's comments came just hours after Hochul, speaking in Manhattan, pushed again on her proposed changes to alter the state's discovery laws and said that talks were not completed yet but at the "five yard line," using a football analogy.
On Tuesday, Heastie told reporters he had developed the "framework" of a deal on discovery after spending the Passover weekend talking with the five district attorneys in New York City.
Hochul, who was at the same time speaking in Kingston, Ulster County, wasn't quick to sign onto that deal on discovery language, and spent Tuesday night and most of Wednesday negotiating tweaks with the legislators.
In her original pitch to lawmakers, Hochul had asked to adjust the scope of what evidence a prosecutor has to turn over to the defense in a criminal case, allow for less severe penalties than dismissal when an issue with the prosecution's conduct in discovery is found, and set a deadline for when the defense can file a complaint with the court regarding discovery.
Hochul has argued those changes will protect the victims of crimes by ensuring the cases against their abusers aren't thrown out over technical mistakes. She's tied the issue with domestic violence, retail theft and other crime issues, and leaned on DAs from around the state to argue that the current discovery rules were hurting otherwise concrete cases.
Evidence of this is thin, however; when a case is dismissed it becomes sealed, so the public and the press haven't been able to review any of the cases the DAs or the governor claim were dismissed over discovery issues.
And some progressive lawmakers have argued that goes too far, and would allow prosecutors to withhold evidence they find that could exonerate defendants.
A source close to the internal discussions told the Watertown Daily Times on Thursday morning that discovery is settled, and lawmakers are moving on to the final few issues to settle.
Lawmakers still have to come up with a deal on involuntary commitment standards, which those close to discussions say are less likely to be as controversial as the discovery debate has been.
Lawmakers voted to pass another bill to fund the state government through Wednesday of next week and promptly left the Capitol Thursday ahead of the Easter weekend.
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