In October 2018, Wilmer Maldonado Rodriguez stepped in to protect two boys who were being threatened by members of the MS-13 gang on Long Island, officials said. In return, the gang members stabbed Mr. Rodriguez repeatedly and hit him in the head with a bat.
Despite the vicious assault, Mr. Rodriguez agreed to testify against the gang members, who were charged with assault and witness intimidation as a result of the attack, officials said.
On Sunday, Mr. Rodriguez was found beaten to death outside a home in New Cassel, N.Y., and on Wednesday, his killing became a new flash point in the debate over criminal justice changes enacted by the New York State Legislature in 2019 at the urging of progressive lawmakers.
Since the start of the year, when the changes took effect, police officials and prosecutors who are unhappy about the changes have focused most of their criticism on an overhaul of the state’s bail law, which they argue has allowed criminals to go free and commit new offenses.
Supporters of the revised laws have countered that law enforcement officials and other critics are fear-mongering and cherry-picking negative stories to undermine public support for the bail and other changes.
The killing of Mr. Rodriguez, 36, turned attention to a change in the so-called discovery law, which governs when prosecutors must turn over information about their investigative findings.
And it came several weeks after a judge ordered prosecutors to disclose Mr. Rodriguez’s identity to lawyers who represented the gang members accused of attacking him, officials said.
New York had been one of just 10 states that let prosecutors wait until the eve of trial to turn over witness names and statements and other key evidence. Under the new rules, such information must generally be shared within 15 days of a defendant’s arraignment, although prosecutors can seek, and judges can issue, protective orders to shield witnesses’ identities.
Madeline Singas, the Nassau County district attorney, said in a statement that her office had obtained a protective order for Mr. Rodriguez in December 2018, but that his identity had been disclosed to defense lawyers in December 2019 under a judge’s order.
Judge Helene F. Gugerty of Nassau County Court is presiding over the case. A spokesman for the state court system did not immediately respond to a request for information about why the order had been issued.
While Ms. Singas did not specifically cite the new law as contributing to Mr. Rodriguez’s death, she suggested in her statement that being forced to identify him well before trial had hampered the authorities’ ability to protect him, and may have cost him his life.
“This courageous man was prepared to testify against alleged assailants at an upcoming trial, but he was brutally beaten to death before he could,” Ms. Singas said in the statement, adding that the case “underscores the importance of safeguarding the identities of witnesses and victims of crimes.”
Patrick Ryder, the Nassau County police commissioner, echoed that sentiment at a news conference.
“This man’s dead because we didn’t do enough,” Commissioner Ryder said, according to Newsday. He added, “This law is not helping us.”
He said that the trial in the case was originally scheduled to begin on Jan. 6, but did not. After that, he said, a “pattern of intimidation” against Mr. Rodriguez began.
“That protective order, because of the new changes in the law, was lifted,” he said. “We don’t know if the defense counsel turned that info over to the defendants.”
Commissioner Ryder sought to clarify his remarks in a statement issued later, saying there was “no direct link between the death of Wilmer Maldonado Rodriguez and criminal justice reform.”
Proponents of the discovery changes — who said the old rules forced many defendants to decide on whether to enter guilty pleas without knowing the strength of the case against them — agreed.
“This has absolutely nothing to do with the new criminal justice reforms,” said Mike Murphy, a spokesman for the State Senate’s Democratic majority, which lobbied aggressively for the bail and discovery changes.
Lisa Schreibersdorf, the executive director of Brooklyn Defender Services, said that any law enforcement authorities seeking to tie Mr. Rodriguez’s death to the new rules were jumping to conclusions with no factual basis.
“There is absolutely no way this is related to the discovery laws,” Ms. Schreibersdorf said, adding that she had spoken to some of the lawyers in the case.
Scott Hechinger, a senior attorney at Brooklyn Defender Services, noted on Twitter that the revised law explicitly allowed judges to shield witnesses’ identities. The law, passed as part of last year’s budget, also says discovery can be limited to a defendant’s lawyer or legal team, and not shared with the defendant.
But David M. Hoovler, the district attorney in Orange County and the president of the District Attorneys Association of New York, said that the case highlighted a potential flaw in the new discovery rules.
Mr. Hoovler, who was among 200 law enforcement officials from across the state who were in Albany on Tuesday to press lawmakers to revisit the bail and discovery changes, said there “should be no set of circumstances” in gang or cartel cases under which “sensitive information is turned over unless it’s immediately before trial.”
“Here’s why,” he added. “Prosecutors have to look witnesses in the eye and tell them and promise them that we can keep them safe. And in this case that is a failure.”
Lawyers for three of the defendants that Mr. Rodriguez was set to testify against did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Two of the three defendants were scheduled to appear in Nassau County Criminal Court on Thursday, according to court records.
Founded in Los Angeles by refugees from El Salvador, MS-13 has long had a base of operations in Long Island, which has been plagued by gang violence in recent years.
In December, the district attorney’s office in Suffolk County, which is next to Nassau, brought sweeping charges against 96 MS-13 members and associates, who were accused of participating in a vast criminal enterprise that carried out assaults, drug deals and murders.
“As we know, MS-13 is a ruthless, savage gang,” Timothy D. Sini, the Suffolk County district attorney, said at the time, adding that the group committed “acts of violence to recruit, retain and control its members and exact revenge on its rivals, as well as to extort innocent members of our community.”
The gang’s notoriety has attracted the attention of President Trump, who has frequently invoked its name and reputation as a kind of shorthand for justifying a crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
“We are getting MS-13 gang members, and many other people that shouldn’t be here, out of our country,” he said on Twitter when Suffolk County officials announced the charges in December.
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