The budget debate to change New York's discovery laws has started to heat up as pushback mounts against Gov. Kathy Hochul's proposal to roll back the 2019 law that hastened the deadline for prosecutors to turn over legal evidence to defense.

Hochul proposed evidence-sharing changes in her executive budget to avoid case dismissals when a judge fails to disclose materials they deem irrelevant and to make penalties for discovery violations proportional to criminal charges after an uptick in dismissals of low-level criminal cases in New York City on technicalities.

But several organizations Monday urged lawmakers to reject it.

"We passed these laws for a reason," said Chris Alexander, executive director of NAACP's New York conference. "...We do not want to go backwards. We refuse to go backwards."

The NAACP and the Legal Aid Society are leading efforts against Hochul's discovery rollback, but it's up to the Legislature to remove the governor's proposal from their one-house budgets released in the middle of March.

"We have to have a system that people can trust and believe in, and believe that they're going to get a fair process and get due process," said Cordell Cleare, a Manhattan Democrat.

Cleare was the only lawmaker to attend Monday's rally to fight Hochul's discovery changes. The event took place at the same time several lawmakers virtually met with the state Department of Corrections & Community Supervision for an update about the ongoing wildcat strikes in prisons across upstate.

The senator said she plans to push her fellow lawmakers to reject Hochul's tweaks, which she argues would enable prosecutors to use discovery as a weapon to compel innocent people to plead guilty to a criminal charge before they've seen the evidence.

Kalle Condliffe, a supervising attorney with the Legal Aid Society, said Hochul's proposal would allow prosecutors to decide what evidence should or should not be disclosed, and could allow police to withhold evidence, which could lead to more wrongful convictions.

"That's a problem, because in any case, even if it's not intentional, a prosecutor is going to see some evidence and not understand its value to the defense," Condliffe said. "And so the point of open-file discovery, which is what we have now, is that they don't have the ability to make those determinations."

At an unrelated event Monday, Hochul told reporters she's gearing up for a debate with legislative leaders about the issue during budget negotiations.

"I have to change the discovery laws now, the DAs and lot of groups want that, so I have a lot of work to do with the Legislature," Hochul said Monday. "But my priority is public safety."

Cleare said she knows other lawmakers also stand against the proposal, but may not be ready to speak publicly.

"We still have to speak up," Cleare said. "We have to stand up and we have to fight back."

The District Attorneys Association of New York has fought to change the discovery law since the 2019 changes took effect, arguing longer processing times and dismissals on technicalities have impacted public safety and leave victims without justice.

Association president Michael McMahon, the Richmond County DA, said the 2019 law has burdened district attorneys offices and caused the surge in case dismissals, or people pleading to much lower charges in exchange for expediency.

"That's not the way the system should work," McMahon told Spectrum News 1. "Defendants should not be held more accountable because the system is overburdened and certainly cases and victims should not not have their day in court because fo the unintended consequences in the law."

Condliffe said the uptick in case dismissals has not happened across the state, but is specific to misdemeanor cases in New York City because of the New York Police Department's resistance to share files with district attorneys, and is unrelated to the discovery statute.

"According to the court data... in a number of the large population centers outside of New York City, the dismissal rate has gone down since 2019," she said.

Hochul's proposal removes consequences for prosecutors who fail to disclose key evidence early on, which Condliffe said would weaken the law.

But McMahon said cases are being dismissed because of evidence that prosecutors did not have and did not know existed.

"All we're saying is, take it back to the normal standard of what has always been the case," McMahon said. "And here's the deal, if they think for any reason that something should have been disclosed, they can ask the court for that as well, and if we think something should not be disclosed...and the court told us to either disclose it or obtain it and disclose it, of course we would, and that's the normal process."

Several lawmakers Monday declined to comment on what they want to see happen with discovery reform in the budget.

Democrats in the Senate and Assembly have not yet conferenced criminal justice issues, or the discovery changes the governor wants. 

Sen. Zellnor Myrie, who's running for mayor of New York City, introduced a bill in January to make the discovery process more efficient without altering the timeline.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins have said they agree something must be done to the state's discovery laws to cut back on case dismissals.

Representatives with Heastie and Stewart-Cousins said the legislative leaders are open to some of the governor's reforms, but not all of them.