NEW YORK CITY—Mayor Eric Adams and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch at an event on April 1 backed Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposed changes to the 2019 discovery law, which are currently delaying the 2026 state budget as Hochul and state legislators clash over the law’s wording.
Discovery laws concern how long before the trial defendants and prosecutors are allowed to collect evidence, and whether that evidence has to be shared.
New York state had particularly strict discovery laws, meaning that little evidence had to be shared between prosecutors and defendants before the trial. The accused would sometimes have to wait long periods to get to their trial. A notable case was when Kalief Browder spent three years at Rikers Island prison awaiting trial for a minor offense that was eventually thrown out.
The 2019 reforms changed these laws. Under the reformed law, if the prosecutors or defense are not ready for trial within 30 days, the case is thrown out. The time is extended to 90 days for misdemeanors and six months for felonies.
The change was intended to shorten the time defendants spent in jail before trial. However, an unintended consequence was the emergence of what many call a revolving-door justice system, where offenders are arrested and then released because prosecutors are unable to gather sufficient evidence within the allotted time.
Adams said at the press conference that “the reforms passed in Albany in 2019 have had unintended consequences and now it’s time to improve the law.”
He mentioned that Tisch had been to Albany to discuss changes to the discovery laws with lawmakers and that he remained skeptical of a victory. The battle at Albany over this issue has been lost every year of Adams’s administration.
Adams said the scenario could be similar to what happened when his administration fought the 2019 bail reforms.
“We had to go back several times for bail reform. There was a lot of pushback on bail reform. Did we get 100 percent of what we want? Nope, we still need to look at that. And so you have to go back,” the mayor said.
While overall crime in New York City is down, recidivism—people committing the same crime repeatedly—has increased.
“The criminal justice reforms of 2019 created a revolving door, made a revolving door out of our criminal justice system. In New York City, we do not have a surging crime problem, but we do have a surging recidivism problem,” Tisch said.
“If you compare 2018, the year before the reforms passed, to 2024, to last year, and you define recidivism as individuals who are committing three or more of the same crime in the same year, recidivism rates are up 146 percent for felony assault, 118 percent for auto theft, 83 percent for robbery, 64 percent for shoplifting, 71 percent for grand larceny and 61 percent for burglary. It’s a travesty.”
Tisch said that too often repeat offenders have their cases dismissed because of technicalities that would “have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the ultimate outcome of the case.” She said one of the main reforms she supports is giving judges discretion in that regard.
“If a piece of evidence has not been turned over before the end of the clock, to determine whether that evidence would have had an impact on the ultimate outcome of the case, and if it wouldn’t, not to have the case dismissed as a result,” Tisch said. “The real problem we are seeing is that too often these cases are thrown out on technicalities that have no bearing on the ultimate outcome, and we are letting violent repeat offenders back out onto the streets.”
Speaking about how long it takes to address issues like this, Adams said: “Sometimes what happens in Albany is the advocates drive the agenda. And oftentimes the advocates come from communities that are not impacted.”
In the state Legislature, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie have expressed reservations about the proposed changes and are advocating for tweaks to the language in the law that would limit the evidence prosecutors are required to turn over.
“Our policy team, our counsels, our agency commissioners, are very serious about the work they do and they take time when they draft things, especially as it relates to changes to the criminal code,” Heastie said last month. “These are people’s lives that we’re talking about, and we want to be very deliberate about how we deliver that.”
Heastie updated reporters on April 2 regarding the state of negotiations.
“I think everybody is trying to get to a good place [with the Discovery laws], including the DAs, but we just keep spinning our wheels,” he said.
