ALBANY — A day before a series of changes to the state’s criminal discovery laws went into effect, Gov. Kathy Hochul took a victory lap.

“This is a day that will forever be remembered as a day we took back our streets and our communities and made them safer,” Hochul declared Wednesday from the steps in a gilded chamber of the historic Albany County Courthouse.

The reforms, included in the state budget passed earlier this year, will reduce the volume of evidence a prosecuting attorney has to turn over to the defense’s legal team when taking a case to trial, and opens up less severe penalties for when a prosecutor’s office makes a verified mistake in handling and handover of evidence.

In 2019, as a part of a wider push to liberalize New York’s criminal justice laws, lawmakers put a strict time requirement in place for when attorneys have to turn evidence over, and made violations of the strict discovery rules grounds for dismissal of a case. Under the terms of the laws, effective Thursday, judges can rule for less severe penalties for discovery violations, the defense will have a limited amount of time to file a grievance with the court alleging a violation, and defense counsel must raise the issue with the prosecutor’s office before taking it to the judge.

Hochul fought hard for these changes in the state budget this year. She negotiated for months behind closed doors with the top Democrats in the state Assembly and Senate, whose conferences wanted little to no change to the status quo. As the budget remained unfinished past its April 1 deadline, Hochul started bringing district attorneys from across New York to the state Capitol to host impromptu meetings with the Capitol press corps, to put more pressure on the legislature to accept her proposals.

The governor tied the reforms to domestic violence, bringing to the Capitol women who have been abused at home to describe how they believed the discovery reforms would have helped them win in court against their abusers faster and more easily.

As negotiations drew to a close, Hochul hosted a press conference where she declared victory with no concessions — which evidently came too early. Despite both Hochul and her chief legal counsel’s words in late April, the final agreement struck in early May had substantive differences from what she had been proposing and said was finished.

At the time, Hochul said dismissals weren’t on the table under the reformed laws. Dismissal remains on the table for violations of the discovery statues, specifically when a judge finds a prosecutor failed to turn over important evidence to the defense. The law, as it stood after the 2019 reforms, implemented an automatic dismissal requirement when a prosecutor fails to turn over evidence deemed important to a case, and that requirement remains.

The terms Hochul did successfully carry through negotiations include changing the definition of evidence that must be turned over from all “related” evidence to all “relevant” evidence, opening up less severe penalties than dismissal for less severe violations, and establishing a 35-day countdown clock for when defense counsel can file a formal complaint.

On Wednesday, Hochul said the reforms from 2019 were well-intentioned but went too far.

“This pendulum had swung too far in one direction, but it should not have swung so far in the opposite direction, and that’s the status of the laws in the state of New York up until now,” Hochul said.

She said the evidence showed that dismissals skyrocketed after the laws went into effect, from 10,000 in 2019 to 50,000 statewide in 2024. Hochul and the DAs she brought to champion her reforms often cited cases they said were dismissed because of minor violations of discovery laws, but were unable to give specifics or prove their arguments. Dismissed court cases are sealed, their documents are not free for public review to substantiate what drove the judge’s decision to rule for a dismissal.

“So starting tomorrow, cases will no longer be thrown out over trivial errors that have no bearing … on guilt or innocence,” she said. “Criminals won’t walk free because someone hit the wrong button uploading a surveillance video. Criminals will not walk free when a police personnel file is submitted a day late or prosecutors leave out a report of which there’s already a duplicate copy of it in the file. This is a good day, my friends.”

Hochul has long said she puts public safety at the top of her priority list. She noted that since she took office in August 2021, the state has spent $2.6 billion on law enforcement and public safety.

“That’s not defunding the police, that is supercharging funding for our police officers, and I’ll always continue to do that as long as I’m governor,” she said.