NEW YORK STATE ASSEMBLY MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF LEGISLATION submitted in accordance with Assembly Rule III, Sec 1(f)
BILL NUMBER: A6526
SPONSOR: Brown K TITLE OF BILL:
An act to amend the criminal procedure law, in relation to changing the
timing of certain discovery requirements to sixty days prior to trial
PURPOSE OR GENERAL IDEA OF BILL:
Amends the criminal procedure law by to allow prosecutors the time to
properly build cases against a defendant while allowing a defendant
ample time to craft a defense by requiring discovery sixty days prior to
the start of trial.
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:
Section 1: Establishes that the prosecution must fulfill discovery obli-
gations no later sixty days prior to the start date of trial.
Section 2: Establishes the effective date.
JUSTIFICATION:
Prosecutors across New York have been struggling to meet the demands of
the Discovery Reform laws passed in 2019. One major reason for these
struggles has been the discovery timeframe requirement that all material
to be used in trail must 1e given to the defendant within 20 days of
arraignment. According to Division of Criminal Justice Services surveys,
this 20-day requirement coupled with the additional information that
prosecutors are now required to provide requires an expenditure of
resources which most prosecutors' offices across the state are too over-
burdened and understaffed to handle.
With courts heavily congested, trial dates for defendants are set months
to years after they are charged. In these cases, prosecutors are allot-
ted only 20 days to organize a case against a defendant which will not
be tried for potentially a year. By changing the discovery timeframe to
be sixty days from the start of trail rather than twenty days from
arraignment, prosecutors' offices will be less overburdened due to time-
frames and defendants will still have ample time to craft a defense
against what they are charges.
PRIOR LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:
2023-24: A.10147
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS FOR STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS:
EFFECTIVE DATE:
This act shall take effect immediately
STATE OF NEW YORK
________________________________________________________________________
6526
2025-2026 Regular Sessions
IN ASSEMBLY
March 5, 2025
___________
Introduced by M. of A. K. BROWN -- read once and referred to the Commit-
tee on Codes
AN ACT to amend the criminal procedure law, in relation to changing the
timing of certain discovery requirements to sixty days prior to trial
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assem-bly, do enact as follows:
1 Section 1. Paragraphs (i) and (ii) of paragraph (a) of subdivision 1
2 of section 245.10 of the criminal procedure law, as amended by section 1
3 of part HHH of chapter 56 of the laws of 2020, are amended to read as
4 follows:
5 (i) When a defendant is in custody during the pendency of the criminal
6 case, the prosecution shall perform its initial discovery obligations
7 [within twenty calendar days after the defendant's arraignment on an
8 indictment, superior court information, prosecutor's information, infor-
9 mation, simplified information, misdemeanor complaint or felony
10 complaint] no later than sixty days before the first scheduled trial
11 date.
12 (ii) When the defendant is not in custody during the pendency of the
13 criminal case, the prosecution shall perform its initial discovery obli-
14 gations [within thirty-five calendar days after the defendant's arraign-
15 ment on an indictment, superior court information, prosecutor's informa-
16 tion, information, simplified information, misdemeanor complaint or
17 felony complaint] no later than sixty days before the first scheduled
18 trial date.
19 § 2. This act shall take effect immediately.
EXPLANATION--Matter in italics (underscored) is new; matter in brackets
[] is old law to be omitted.
LBD10225-01-5
