The weekend before last, a 36-year-old Long Island man named Wilmer Maldonado Rodriguez was murdered.
Three days later, the Nassau County Police held a press conference, to tell the world that his death was a result of the part of the 2020 criminal justice reforms here in New York that mandate that the prosecution actually share information with the defense. That claim was completely false, but that didn’t stop multiple news outlets from reporting on it.
This is Newsday’s lede, which is somehow still up:
A man found bludgeoned to death in New Cassel Sunday was killed after his identity as a victim willing to testify against his alleged MS-13 attackers was revealed to the defense as part of the pre-trial process, police said Wednesday.
The local CBS affiliate has roughly the same story, still up. News 12 doesn’t go quite as far, but posted what is basically a one-source story extensively quoting the news conference. There were no updates to any of the three stories.
The New York Times has extensively revised its story since it was published on Wednesday evening, including a second story that effectively discredits its original reporting.
This is the meat of its story from February 5:
But the killing of Mr. Rodriguez, 36, turned attention to a change in the state’s so-called discovery law, which governs when prosecutors must turn over information about their investigative findings.
The murder came several weeks after a judge ordered prosecutors to disclose Mr. Rodriguez’s identity to lawyers who represented his alleged attackers, as called for by revisions to the discovery process generally requiring that such information be shared within 15 days of a first court appearance. New York previously let prosecutors wait until the eve of trial to turn over the material.
Madeline Singas, the Nassau County district attorney, said that being forced to identify Mr. Rodriguez well before trial had hampered the authorities’ ability to protect him — ultimately costing him his life.
The story also quoted the Nassau Police Commissioner’s news conference, which the Newsday story is based on.
The story currently starts with an update—effectively a retraction—linking to the second story they ran: “Update: The police commissioner’s claims were called into question after an examination of court records.” The references to claims that the new discovery laws led to Mr. Rodriguez’s death have been softened and pushed down the page.
The second story, in which a reporter went as far as to do some reporting and look at the records of the case, finds the claims completely false:
But an examination of court records on Thursday indicated that in fact the information was never disclosed to the defendants in the case — and that the new criminal justice policies had nothing to do with the murder of Wilmer Maldonado Rodriguez.
Amazing! Reporting! Two days late, sure, but at least someone eventually made a phone call.
The issue that is swirling around here in the background is whether the defense should have access to the prosecution’s witness information. The extreme example of why the prosecution should be able to keep their witnesses secret is the defendant(s) find out the person giving evidence against them, which could put them in prison for years or decades, and have that person killed. Mob shit. We all watch movies.
In very serious cases, the safety of the witnesses is a concern. However, the new laws don’t ignore that. There is a robust system for dealing with protecting witnesses. The real change from 2019 is not that the prosecution is not able to protect its witnesses’ information, but that the prosecutor has to appear in front of a judge early on in a case and give the reasons it wants to protect the witnesses. The prosecution has to do some up front work — it can’t just redact whatever it wants on the discovery it sends over to the defense like it did up until this point.
The new laws also envision that, mostly, protective orders will allow the defendants’ attorneys to see the witness information, but require them not to tell their clients. That way, the defense attorneys can contact witnesses and talk to them about the information they have. They can, like, investigate their case, know what evidence might come out against their client at trial, and properly prepare a defense as is required of them by the Constitution.
This—a protective order that allowed defense attorneys access to witness information but prohibited them from telling their clients—is what was in place in the Long Island case in which Mr. Rodriguez was a witness. The police commissioner’s insinuations that Mr. Rodriguez must have been killed because the defense attorneys were given access to his name is based on the monstrous and offensive assumption that the defense attorneys improperly shared witness information with their clients in violation of a court order, and then the defendants went out and had this man killed. Any worry about giving witness information to defense attorneys hinges on an assumption that the defense attorney will act unethically.
In truth, according to the Times reporting, the attorneys confirmed to the court they did not give out Mr. Rodriguez’s information. AND, in further truth, the defendants knew the witness from the beginning. The whole case was about how the defendants had beat up the witness back in 2018, and it seems like everybody knew each other prior to the incident. Protective order or not, the defendants knew who the complaining witness was when the case started. The protective order was largely smoke and mirrors. (There is also no evidence the defendants had anything to do with Mr. Rodriguez’s murder, regardless of their familiarity with him. There is evidence that Mr. Rodriguez was homeless—the government cares about their witnesses, but only up to a point.)
Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, unnecessary redactions make my job harder, and seem specifically designed to do that.
I have a couple of cases going on right now where the complainant and the defendant are married or in a relationship. They don’t currently live together, but have been on intimate terms for years. All of my cases are misdemeanors. But when the prosecution sends over the discovery to me, they redact the complainant’s contact information. They maaaaaaaaybe give me a phone number, but no address and no birth date. What is the point??? My client clearly has all of this information. The complainant in most of these cases lives at the place where this incident is alleged to have occurred. It’s right there in the complaint! Redacting the information seems not to be about the witness’s safety, but about making me jump through hoops to be able to investigate my cases.
Those kinds of games, rightfully, are what the new laws are meant to stop. Maybe the NYT wants to write about that. (Call me! My number is [redacted].)