Title: Midday News: Brooklyn Woman Sues Landlord Over Fatal Shooting, Winter Weather Advisory Issued for NYC, and Mayor Adams Pushes for Changes to Discovery Law [music]

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Female Speaker: Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Wednesday, February 5th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill.

Michael Hill: A Brooklyn woman is suing her former landlord for allegedly failing to protect her family from a neighbor who shot and killed her husband and son. Marie Delisle is seeking $10 million in damages from the landlord of Flatbush Gardens, the sprawling complex where the shooting happened in 2023. Delisle and police say the violence stemmed from a dispute over noise. She says she complained multiple times about threats from the neighbor, but the management did not take action.

Marie Delisle: They never do anything. Even after what happened, they don't even call me.

Michael Hill: A spokesperson for the landlord, Flatbush Gardens, Clipper Realty, says, "The incident was tragic," but declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing pending litigation. NYPD officials say Jessen Pass, the neighbor who shot the men, died when police shot and killed him in a confrontation several days later. The New York region will be under a winter weather advisory tomorrow because of a wintry forecast for the day. Meteorologist James Tomasini with the National Weather Service says, "The city and surrounding areas could see an inch or two of snow overnight and then some rain by late tomorrow morning."

James Tomasini: There's going to be a changeover eventually in the middle of the night into early Thursday morning with some sleep mixed in there.

Michael Hill: Tomasini says, "Ice on roads could make the morning commute dangerous. Temperatures are expected to drop into the upper 20s tonight, then rise to the upper 30s by tomorrow." New York City, by the way, is suspending alternate side parking rules for tomorrow. 32 with sunshine now, partly sunny, and 35 feeling as cold as 20 degrees today.

Female Speaker: Stay close. There's more after the break.

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Sean Carlson: On WNYC, I'm Sean Carlson. Tin Cup Day. It's the day when mayors from across the state ask Governor Hochul and lawmakers to make the case for their local priorities. Mayor Adams big asks was about something more than money.

Mayor Adams: When I speak with my district attorneys, they tell us we need to have a close examination of discovery to make sure that we're not getting any unintended consequences.

Sean Carlson: Discovery laws are at the very heart of the criminal justice process. Those are the rules that determine when and what evidence is shared by prosecutors to defendants. They're at the heart of this year's budget negotiations. Here to tell us how a seemingly arcane procedural process has taken on an outsized role in this year's budget talks is Hannah E. Meyers. She's the director of policing and public safety at the Manhattan Institute and used to work in the NYPD's Intelligence Bureau. Hannah, can you just explain to us in very basic terms what we mean when we talk about discovery laws?

Hannah E. Meyers: Absolutely, and thank you for having me on to talk about discovery. I think one reason it hasn't gained the public attention of bail reform, which passed at the same time in 2019, is because it's a lot harder to understand, especially for the layperson, in its mechanics and in how it has so damaged, not just public safety in New York, but the fairness and even the functioning of New York's criminal justice system.

What the law changed was the rules of evidence collection for prosecutors in New York, for the District Attorney's offices, so that whereas before, prosecutors only had to collect material that had a bearing on the outcome of a case and turn it over to the defendant, something that would affect the innocence-- have implication for the innocence or guilt of the defendant, and anything else that the prosecutor might have handy, he could turn over in an open file policy, and usually that was connected to cases that were going forward to trial, there would be more evidence turned over.

What the 2019 reform changed is that now prosecutors have to collect and share everything, all material at all related to a case, even if that material is irrelevant, redundant, has no bearing at all on the outcome of the case. Prosecutors still have to collect it, even if the case is not going to trial. They have to do it in a very short time frame, 20 to 35 days. This is an enormous compliance burden for each and every case that a prosecutor brings in New York.

Imagine real quickly if you have a fight that breaks out in Times Square, and it's a crowded place with lots of onlookers and cameras and cops, now, in order to prosecute the people fighting, you know, for assault or whatever, a prosecutor has to collect every witness statement, every piece of surveillance footage has to be reviewed, redacted and shared, body camera footage, every police memo book from a police on the scene has to be collected and shared, even if it has no pertinent material at all to the outcome of the case.

One of the largest impacts that this has had is that prosecutors simply can't do that for each and every case. That's one reason Mayor Adams is so involved, is that New York City bears the brunt of this because we have such a high caseload in the five boroughs compared to upstate. What do prosecutors do? They can't collect that material for every case.

Sean Carlson: The Initial revisions to the discovery laws happened when the criminal justice reform movement was at its apex. At the end of the last decade, many of the Democrats who voted for the initial package are still in office. What's changed that leads you to believe they'll vote to pare back those very reforms that they voted on not too long ago?

Hannah E. Meyers: Right. That is a great question. I'm sure along the progressive side of the Democrats in the legislature in New York, which is still a very powerful body, there's a lot of real ideologues in the group who-- It doesn't matter the impact in data on how many cases have been dismissed, which is now about 60% of cases in New York City of prosecuted cases. I think what's changed is that you saw in the implementation hearings in 2019, advocates were making the argument, "Hey, if prosecutors run out of time to prosecute these cases, it just means they never had to prosecute them to begin with."

I think that that could fly in 2019 with the Zeitgeist of criminal justice reform. I think voters now are a little more concerned, or certainly more concerned, much more concerned about public safety and about how responsive the criminal justice system is to public safety. Our criminals who are guilty of their crimes, simply having their cases tossed routinely, which they are.

I think that the argument. Well, you know, they never need to prosecute these cases that have merit, especially a lot of these cases getting dismissed. They're domestic violence, they're forcible touching, their shoplifting, they're things that affect people's lives. We're not hearing those arguments in the legislature right now. We're hearing more, "Well, the felony," kind of slicing the data. That's how legal aid is approaching it, and trying to say the felony dismissals weren't so much. At this point, the data is so strong.

In Manhattan criminal court, a third of cases are now getting dismissed simply because prosecutors run out of time to prosecute them. No consideration of justice involved. They have just run out of time. That's a third of cases in Manhattan criminal court. It's hard to run away from that data, especially when you consider that even with all the amendments being considered, New York would still have the most progressive discovery regime in the whole country.

Sean Carlson: Very complicated issue. That's Hannah Meyer. She's the Manhattan Institute's Director of Policing and Public Safety. Hannah, thanks so much for joining us.

Hannah E. Meyers: Thank you very much for having me.

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