There was little doubt that New York’s pretrial discovery rules needed to be changed back in 2019.

New York used to have some of the most restrictive discovery rules in the country, with prosecutors allowed to withhold information until scant days before a trial began. Such “blindfold laws” put defendants at an unfair disadvantage, according to the Marshall Project, by forcing them to either agree to a plea bargain or prepare for trial without knowing all the evidence against them.

But, the 20-day discovery window may have been an overcorrection. Prosecutors argued they didn’t have enough staff to meet the quicker timeline to disclose evidence to the defense. They noted, correctly, the increase in state funding to district attorneys offices in the wake of the 2019 bail reform legislation paled in comparison with state funding of indigent defense programs and other funding disbursed to Public Defense offices around the state.

This old news became new again this week, when the 20-day discovery window made headlines in the criminal case against the man accused of stabbing author Salman Rushdie. County District Attorney Jason Schmidt asked for more time to pour through the 30,000 files or pieces of evidence in the case to prepare them for the defense. It’s hard to imagine how, with one of the highest caseloads in the state already, Schmidt’s team is going to meet the deadline. A decision on Schmidt’s request from Judge David Foley is expected this week.

Meeting the 20-day discovery standard should be manageable in most instances. After all, many cases are plea bargained and in other cases there isn’t that much evidence to be turned over. But already busy police agencies and district attorneys find themselves in an impossible position in a case like this — marshal all your resources to meet the state’s discovery rules to avoid a potential mistrial at the expense of possibly neglecting public safety.

In our opinion, a simple legislative fix should be considered for cases with thousands of pieces of evidence setting a schedule of evidence collection and a trial date a prescribed amount of time from the final evidentiary disclosure. The scales of justice should be equal for both the victims of crime and those accused of a crime. Adhering to the state’s 20-day discovery rule in cases like that involving Rushdie’s alleged attacker, in our opinion, tips the scales of justice too far in one direction.