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ADADummy t1_j6orn32 wrote

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

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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