Tuesday, March 25, 2025
Year : 2, Issue: 30
CBS 6 Albany: As part of the 2026 executive budget, New York Governor Kathy Hochul is advocating for significant changes to the state’s discovery law, aiming to enhance procedural fairness, shorten case processing times, and reduce pretrial incarceration lengths.
Governor Hochul’s proposal includes expanding the scope of automatic redaction to protect witnesses’ personal data and ensuring cases are not dismissed due to discovery compliance issues. This initiative follows a nearly 15 percent increase in dismissed domestic violence cases in New York City after reforms in 2020. In 2023, 94.3 percent of cases in New York City and 49.1 percent outside the city were dismissed.
Standing alongside domestic violence survivors, Governor Hochul shared a personal story to emphasize the importance of advocacy. “I think back to my mother’s own story, what she witnessed as a child and carried that trauma with her entire life. But she decided to use that pain and harness it to alleviate the pain of others, and that stuck with me,” she said.
Additionally, there is a concerted effort to improve medical and law enforcement responses to domestic violence and sexual abuse to better support survivors.
