Bronx DA Darcel Clark is leading efforts to undo portions of a 2019 state law that requires prosecutors to quickly hand over evidence to defense lawyers, says the brother of Kalief Browder, who spent three years in Rikers Island awaiting trial in a case Clark delayed as a Bronx judge.
“State legislators invoked Kalief’s name to pass these reforms. And Darcel Clark, now the DA in the Bronx, has come to repeal and take away these laws passed in my brother’s name,” Akeem Browder said Tuesday at City Hall.
He added, “These changes would mean more deaths on Rikers, more people to suffer, no speedy trial. I asked that the legislators use my brother’s name to stay true to what they believed before. My family is just beyond words for understanding how this came to be.”
A spokesperson for Clark did not respond to a request for comment on Browder’s remarks.
When she was a Bronx judge, Clark presided over six court dates in the case of Kalief Browder, who was jailed after his arrest in 2010 on charges of stealing a teen’s backpack in Belmont. He spent much of his time at Rikers Island in solitary confinement, and he was not freed until 2013. Browder took his own life in 2015 at age 22.
The court hearings Clark presided over helped prolong Browder’s pretrial detention by more than 300 days, according to his former lawyer and his brother.
Browder recalled one particular court date in 2012 when Clark told his brother, “Take the plea and you’ll go home today.”
“She got mad because he didn’t accept the plea bargain as if he was supposed to do what she said,” Akeem Browder recalled. “Since he didn’t accept it, she said something to the effect of, ‘We’ll teach you.’ The next day he was sent to solitary.”
Kalief Browder’s former lawyer, Paul Prestia, described Clark’s role in the case as “complete indifference, apathy or (lack of) concern.”
“She allowed prosecutors baseless extended adjournments … it’s like she didn’t want to be bothered,” he said.
Clark’s stint on the Browder case came during the pre-discovery reform era when it was routine to grant “adjournments” — an extension or temporary delay — to prosecutors as a matter of courtesy based on thin justifications.
Lawyers say the adjournments had the on-the-ground effect of prolonging pre-trial detentions for months or more and increasing pressure on defendants to plead guilty.
The 2019 discovery law reform was meant to curb such delays by requiring prosecutors to turn over to criminal defense lawyers a wider array of evidence more quickly.
Now, Clark has taken a key role in backing a change to the discovery law which would put a deadline on the amount of time the defense has to file a motion claiming prosecutors have not turned over all their evidence.
Clark has said part of the 2019 reforms has overburdened prosecutors. “Even the most straightforward case has proven to be an unsustainable burden,” Clark said in a March 20 City Council hearing.
Clark said at the hearing her office’s dismissal rate has risen 18%, and cited a case where prosecutors turned over 238,000 pages of documents and body-cam video from 28 officers.
She claimed a judge found the office out of compliance and the case could be dismissed because the prosecutor couldn’t provide “46 pieces of material sought from the NYPD and CCRB.”
Meanwhile, in Albany on Tuesday, after weeks of stalled talks centered around bail and Hochul’s housing proposals, the governor and legislative leaders struck a tentative deal that would give judges more discretion to set bail for serious crimes.
While final language has yet to be released, the compromise could grant jurists greater leeway to set bail in violent felony cases by removing the “least restrictive means” requirement — but would keep in place a section of the law defining bail as a tool to ensure a defendant returns to court.
Hochul and leaders in Albany have expressed hope that a budget deal could be announced by the end of the week. It remains unclear whether any change to the discovery laws will be made.
Gov. Hochul earmarked $40 million in her $227 billion executive budget proposal specifically to help district attorneys implement discovery reforms and another $52 million in prosecution funding for all 62 district attorneys’ offices.