Sorry, I have no sympathy for the prosecutors. I'm sure a some good ones were lost, but plenty of them are garbage.
The new discovery requirements they mention say that evidence has to be turned over to the defense:
Within 15 days if it is a traffic offense or code violation
Within 20 days if the defendant is being kept in jail
Within 35 days if the defendant is free pending charges
The prosecutors can request a 30 day extension if they deem there to be larger amounts of evidence.
Now, the one area I would disagree with it some is that apparently some cases are getting thrown out because of things the prosecution is not using are not getting turned over to the defense. So I think it would be fair for the defense to gather their own evidence and then submit it to the prosecution within the same timeframe. And then the evidence allowed to be used in the trial is the combination of what both gathered. (It makes little sense to me that only one side has to do the legwork). And additionally I can certainly see cases where people (or bureaucracies) would stonewall handing over evidence to the prosecutors thus making it difficult to hit the deadlines.
But the 6th amendment exists for a reason. Keeping someone in jail for months on shaky or trumped up charges (cough Jan 6 cough), or cases like Rittenhouse prove why it is necessary, and frankly that it is not being enforced. The event happened on August 25th, 2020. Rittenhouse was charged on January 5th, 2021 - over four months before he was even told what he was being charged with. The trial itself didn't start until November 1st, 2021 - more than 14 months since the event. There was no valid justification for that delay, other then the prosecutors and DA just trying to punish Kyle extra-judicially.
So, yeah, I'm not crying over prosecutors who say they're being overworked by needing to do their job in a reasonable amount of time.
Why would the defense ever need to proactively gather evidence? Are the DAs looking to prove their clients innocence? The way the system is written, the prosecution is attempting to prove guilt against the party's assumed innocence.
How much evidence could you gather within, say, a week that you didn't commit a murder? I don't have very much evidence of crimes I haven't committed lying around.
If the defense doesn't want to gather any, then it doesn't have to and it certainly wouldn't be going after any potentially harmful evidence. But, getting some basic defense evidence is a lot easier than you seem to make it out to be - I'm assuming you would have an alibi for why you didn't commit a murder and I imagine you could get some evidence supporting the alibi could be fairly easy. Testimony from a friend that you were hanging out, traffic logs from a streaming service or a game service that you were at home watching/playing when the murder happened, GPS data from your phone, whatever. A lawyer could at least request if not get that in a week or two without any issue.
Sorry, I have no sympathy for the prosecutors. I'm sure a some good ones were lost, but plenty of them are garbage.
The new discovery requirements they mention say that evidence has to be turned over to the defense:
Within 15 days if it is a traffic offense or code violation
Within 20 days if the defendant is being kept in jail
Within 35 days if the defendant is free pending charges
The prosecutors can request a 30 day extension if they deem there to be larger amounts of evidence.
Now, the one area I would disagree with it some is that apparently some cases are getting thrown out because of things the prosecution is not using are not getting turned over to the defense. So I think it would be fair for the defense to gather their own evidence and then submit it to the prosecution within the same timeframe. And then the evidence allowed to be used in the trial is the combination of what both gathered. (It makes little sense to me that only one side has to do the legwork). And additionally I can certainly see cases where people (or bureaucracies) would stonewall handing over evidence to the prosecutors thus making it difficult to hit the deadlines.
But the 6th amendment exists for a reason. Keeping someone in jail for months on shaky or trumped up charges (cough Jan 6 cough), or cases like Rittenhouse prove why it is necessary, and frankly that it is not being enforced. The event happened on August 25th, 2020. Rittenhouse was charged on January 5th, 2021 - over four months before he was even told what he was being charged with. The trial itself didn't start until November 1st, 2021 - more than 14 months since the event. There was no valid justification for that delay, other then the prosecutors and DA just trying to punish Kyle extra-judicially.
So, yeah, I'm not crying over prosecutors who say they're being overworked by needing to do their job in a reasonable amount of time.
Why would the defense ever need to proactively gather evidence? Are the DAs looking to prove their clients innocence? The way the system is written, the prosecution is attempting to prove guilt against the party's assumed innocence.
How much evidence could you gather within, say, a week that you didn't commit a murder? I don't have very much evidence of crimes I haven't committed lying around.
If the defense doesn't want to gather any, then it doesn't have to and it certainly wouldn't be going after any potentially harmful evidence. But, getting some basic defense evidence is a lot easier than you seem to make it out to be - I'm assuming you would have an alibi for why you didn't commit a murder and I imagine you could get some evidence supporting the alibi could be fairly easy. Testimony from a friend that you were hanging out, traffic logs from a streaming service or a game service that you were at home watching/playing when the murder happened, GPS data from your phone, whatever. A lawyer could at least request if not get that in a week or two without any issue.
Fair enough