09-04-2025
Defense Attorney on discovery law controversy at heart of state budget delay
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) — New York State lawmakers recently passed a third budget extender which runs through Wednesday, April 9, allowing government employees to still get paid. One major policy item still causing a hold up: the state's discovery law.
Last week, News8 explored why local District Attorneys are in favor of continued changes and now our news team is hearing from the Monroe County Public Defender's Office. The Discovery Law was first passed in 2019 and then implemented in 2020 and requires prosecutors to turn over evidence to defense attorneys in a more timely manner.
First Assistant at the Monroe County Public Defender's Office, Erik Teifke, explains that New York was actually one of the last states across the country to have these rules on the books, adding it allows those accused of a crime the ability to have the information they need to make informed decisions.
'It's approaching fair in this one respect, in an otherwise pretty unbalanced criminal justice system. So we have one effort in one area of the system to establish some evening of the playing field. And the people that have enjoyed all of these institutional advantages believe it to be an outrage, because they now have requirements that they must meet,' Teifke explains.
The Governor is calling for more changes, amid several revisions and rollbacks over subsequent years, asking for the elimination of what the governor calls 'incentives' to delay discovery challenges and ensure any errors made in discovery are addressed specifically regarding that evidence as opposed to a technicality.
Teifke notes that there are exceptions already built in place for prosecutors (as part of those revisions). He adds that the responsibility of ensuring the current process is implemented properly hinges on compliance from all agencies involved.
'It's not as onerous as they would have you believe. And the proof of this lies in the fact that a lot of prosecutors are complying with the law – plenty of them are. In our local District Attorney's Office, there are prosecutors who comply with this law – their cases aren't dismissed, they suffer no consequences and then there are others who just don't,' Teifke says, also noting thousands of cases get dismissed for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons can include police not filing competent paperwork or an agreement made with the prosecution.
Teifke claims most increases in dismissal cases post-2020 discovery law implementation can be traced to New York City. Public court data shows Monroe County's Superior Criminal Court saw a decrease in dismissals in 2020 with a slight decrease in 2021 and then a significant decrease by 2022. Across the five counties in the New York City area there was a notable decrease in dismissals in 2020 with a more major upswing by 2022.
'And the problem that they're having there is they have increased dismissals because New York Police Department doesn't cooperate with the prosecutors in those jurisdictions. So, prosecutors in those jurisdictions can't get that bucket of stuff from the police in order to meet their requirements, so cases are getting dismissed,' Teifke says.
The First Assistant points to newly introduced legislation in the Senate called the Myrie bill which would require police departments and agencies to provide DAs' offices with access to electronic records systems for discovery purposes.
Governor Hochul's proposal also calls for expanding the scope of automatic redaction to include sensitive details such as witnesses’ physical addresses and personal data unrelated to the case, eliminating the need to engage in lengthy litigation to redact such material.
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