Judge Zayas on discovery compliance challenges and 20-day deadline

As I said, we need the help of other justice system stakeholders to continue to move the needle.

Let me start with discovery.

New York's discovery statute says that in cases in which the defendant is incarcerated, discovery must be provided within 20 days of arraignment.

In New York City, this deadline largely remains an aspiration.

I'm not unsympathetic to the fact that our discovery laws are extremely onerous.

And I know that the city's district attorneys take their discovery obligations seriously.

But I hope that this morning we can have a serious conversation about when compliance with the discovery deadlines that were a key component of the 2020 criminal justice reforms will become the norm.

Because the fact of the matter is this, cases rarely resolve before discovery is complete.

If discovery were routinely produced in 20 or 25 days rather than 60 or 90 days,

cases would be resolved much faster.

Put simply, if one of the central selling points of discovery reform, namely that earlier, broader discovery of case information will facilitate earlier case resolutions,

is going to be realized, we need to actually have earlier disclosure.