Articles
Defense Attorneys Concerned About Proposed Law Changes
Legislators in North Carolina are considering revisions to the state’s discovery laws that threaten to make it more difficult for criminal defense attorneys to obtain potentially helpful evidence.
The state’s current discovery laws require prosecutors to provide the defense with complete case files including documentation of all conversations with investigators or potential witnesses, unless that documentation contains prosecutorial “opinions, theories, strategies, or conclusions.”
Changes to the bill would give prosecutors more leeway to withhold information gathered from such conversations.
“We do not want them to disclose their strategies or legal opinions or theories, but the facts need to be disclosed,” said Dick Taylor, chief executive officer of the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers.
Jim Cooney, one of the criminal defense attorneys in the recent Duke lacrosse scandal, said discovery laws ensure the system works fairly. In fact, the state’s discovery laws were expanded in 2004, in part because of one of Cooney’s cases. That case involved a man who spent almost a decade on death row because prosecutors withheld important evidence.
“If that bill goes through, we’ll be right back at the far end where little is turned over. That would be a step backward,” said law professor Joseph Kennedy.
(Source: The Fayetteville Observer)
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