Background
In November 2022, Michel Raly was arraigned on two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree after police recovered a gun from his person during a street encounter connected to a homicide investigation in Queens. The Queens County District Attorney filed a Certificate of Compliance (COC) and statement of readiness on April 14, 2023 — nearly five months into the six-month CPL 30.30 clock — followed by a supplemental COC in July 2023 and a second supplemental COC on September 6, 2023.
After the COC filings, Raly moved to strike the COCs and dismiss the indictment under CPL 30.30(1)(a), arguing that the People had failed to disclose mandatory discovery items — including police memo books, property vouchers, and chain-of-custody reports — and therefore had not validly certified compliance with CPL 245. The Supreme Court, Queens County (Gopee, J.), agreed and dismissed the indictment on May 3, 2024. The People appealed, arguing that their disclosure efforts were sufficient and that the time chargeable to them did not exceed six months.
The Court’s Holding
The Appellate Division, Second Department, affirmed the dismissal. Under CPL 245.50(3), a valid Certificate of Compliance requires the People to have “exercised due diligence and made reasonable inquiries to ascertain the existence of material and information subject to discovery.” The burden of establishing due diligence rests on the prosecution. If the People fail to make that showing, the COC must be deemed improper, the statement of readiness is illusory, and — so long as the resulting chargeable time exceeds the CPL 30.30 period — the indictment must be dismissed. (People v Bay, 41 NY3d 200, 211-213.)
Here, the court found that regardless of whether body camera audit trails were themselves subject to mandatory disclosure, the People had failed to establish due diligence with respect to other materials subject to CPL 245.20(1)(e) disclosure — specifically, police memo books, property vouchers, and chain-of-custody reports. Because the People’s entire speedy-trial argument depended on the validity of the COC (and hence the readiness statement), the dismissal stood once the COC was found improper.
Key Takeaways
- A COC is valid only if the prosecution has exercised due diligence across all mandatory CPL 245.20 disclosure obligations — not just body camera footage or high-visibility items.
- Failure to disclose police memo books, property vouchers, and chain-of-custody reports can independently invalidate a COC, even if some other disputed materials would not have done so on their own.
- Once a COC is struck, the readiness statement is illusory and the speedy-trial clock continues to run; the People cannot retroactively rely on the stricken filing to restart the clock.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the strict CPL 30.30 and CPL 245 framework that has reshaped criminal prosecution in New York since the discovery reform legislation of 2020. Courts are not limiting their scrutiny to body camera footage — routine police paperwork such as memo books and evidence vouchers must also be disclosed before a COC can be certified. For prosecutors, the lesson is that pre-COC due diligence must span every category of CPL 245.20(1) material, and the documentation of that diligence must be sufficient to withstand judicial scrutiny.
For defense counsel, this decision confirms that targeted discovery challenges — going beyond body camera issues to probe whether memo books, property vouchers, and custody records were disclosed — remain a viable pathway to CPL 30.30 dismissal. Queens County criminal defense practitioners in particular should note that the Second Department is actively scrutinizing the completeness of the People’s pre-COC disclosure across the full spectrum of mandatory items.