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ADADummy t1_j6okm5y wrote

Reply to comment by ScruffyB in Manhattan DA abruptly drops case against 'crooked cop' Joseph Franco by Speedyx

The fact the office consented to defendant's motion to dismiss, rather than oppose and try appealing the dismissal, leads me to believe that it's closer to a Brady/Rosario issue rather than the new discovery reforms, or if it was the reforms a very egregious violation to the point of perceived willfulness.

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ScruffyB t1_j6opvok wrote

I'd like to think so, but I also worry that line ADAs will get hung out to dry on these big, sprawling cases, where there is little institutional capacity to make sure they have the tools and processes to chase down every loose end. This sort of case must have been a nightmare to assemble under the new discovery laws. This detective was involved in dozens of potentially dirty cases, many of which predated the 2020 reform, so the line ADA has to track down paperwork from physical files, scattered thumb drives, and poorly organized electronic records in several different databases and interfaces. Has the DA's Office built the capacity to conduct that process efficiently, or does it just expect its line prosecutors to work harder because it's the right thing to do? If this ADA really dropped the ball, then fine, maybe it's on them. But I worry that the office will dress up its institutional deficiencies as individual failures, to everyone's detriment.

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ADADummy t1_j6orn32 wrote

I agree generally, but this wasn't a line ADA. It was the deputy chief of the police accountability unit, who was then stripped of her title. If any case had the resources behind it, it was this one.

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ScruffyB t1_j6ottlu wrote

Fair point. Nevertheless, "resources" to me doesn't just mean money, it means systems and institutional memory. If the e-discovery systems are crappy (having been built in-house in the last three years?), then more money and paralegals on a given case won't fix the problem of scattered, disorganized docs. It'll still just be public employees putting in extra hours to try and chase down every scrap of paper.

Side note, too: Seniority and experience can be a handicap for an ADA or deputy chief in these circumstances, because they learned the ropes under a very different discovery regime, so they will have a hard time adapting compared to more junior ADAs who will learn quickly as they plow through a zillion lower-stakes cases.

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ADADummy t1_j6php6e wrote

So the vast majority, if not essentially all, of these new discovery dismissals are because of the intersection of discovery and statutory speedy trial pretrial, which mandates dismissal because you were never ready. This was an in trial motion, meaning you have alternative remedies such as adverse inference, mistrial, etc.

I am pretty sure the consented nature here, plus the dinging of the titled prosecutor, means something more than the normal CPL 245 bs happened here.

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