'Great Resignation' extends to New York City's district attorney offices
NEW YORK -- "The Great Resignation" is extending to prosecutors in New York City's district attorney offices.
Statistics show hundreds have left their jobs during the pandemic, leaving the offices with fewer resources to prosecute crimes, CBS2's Lisa Rozner reported Monday.
After more than a decade with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, Caitlin Nolan left her job as an assistant DA in January for the private sector. She's one of 44 prosecutors in that office to leave this year.
Most attributed it to changes made in 2019 to discovery laws that require they hand over hundreds of documents earlier in case proceedings.
"Not only because of the amount of information that it required, but because ADAs are reliant on other outside organizations," Nolan said. "And while that increased the workloads of ADAs, salaries did not increase at the same rate."
State lawmakers' purpose of speeding up the discovery timeline was to shorten jail stays for defendants in pretrial detention and give them more time to prepare a defense.
But the Manhattan DA recently testified his office can't keep up, even after it added 100 support staff.
"We've seen our content that we take in increase 900 percent," Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said on March 18.
In 2022, there have been 36 resignations from the Brooklyn DA's office and 28 from the Bronx. Queens is on track to more than double last year's resignations. Staten Island's DA said about 10 percent of his prosecutors have left this year.
"The job of the prosecutor has become really to be a paper pusher," Staten Island DA Michael McMahon said. "It's put a pressure on them that really makes their lives unmanageable."
"High workloads, including for public defenders, absolutely diminish morale. This is a problem solved by allocating funding for staffing and technology for all our offices, not one solved at the expense of our clients," the Legal Aid Society said in a statement.
Opinions differ, for instance, on whether mounds of police documents, including a memo book, are necessary.
"Something like disclosing an officer's disciplinary record, that's pretty helpful," said defense attorney Hermann Walz.
This month, Gov. Kathy Hochul is proposing changes to the discovery law.