Nassau Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder says the DA’s office had a hearing regarding the case going to trial in December of last year. He says at that hearing, it was decided that all information that had a protective hold on it would have to be turned over to the defense counsel days later. This included witness names and contact information.
“We don’t know if the defense counsel turned that information over to the defendants, but we do know that right after that time period, we started this pattern of intimidation,” says Ryder.
Ryder says on Jan. 30, one of the other witnesses was shot at. Two days later, he says Rodriguez was beaten but escaped. He was found dead the following day.
4 comments:
This surprises anyone how? More likely this was the desired type of outcome. No witnesses, no trial, the judge gets a break.
Charge the attorney with Murder 1, conspiracy and racketeering.
What ny is doing is letting the lawless run wild, expecting its citizens in the near future to demand a more heavy handed crackdown..... Textbook move on the road to dictatorship.....
To have a fair trial, the defense lawyers _must_ be informed of the prosecution's witnesses far enough ahead of the trial to research them. This is known in the USA as a "Brady requirement", after a Supreme Court decision. It's not rare for prosecutors to put witnesses they should know are lying on the stand, so the defense must be able to look for evidence impeaching the witnesses. But that also means that a _really_ criminal or merely careless defense lawyer may reveal enough to their client to identify the witness.
The problem isn't that the prosecution revealed the witness, it's that the cops didn't protect the witness. They can use the entire SWAT team to raid a pot smoker or a poker game. They can put hundreds of cops on the street to randomly stop and search people just walking through their neighborhood. They can spare cops to look for expired license tags. But they can't spare a half-dozen cops to follow their witness around? As Mark Leigh says above, this goes beyond screwed-up priorities.
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