Witness Warrants Were Misused in Queens and Elsewhere, Court Papers Say
It is one of law enforcement’s most expansive powers: If the authorities believe that someone has knowledge of a crime, they can — under threat of arrest — force the person to testify in court by obtaining what is known as a material witness warrant.
Unlike normal subpoenas, many, if not most, of which are issued to those directly involved in criminal proceedings, material witness warrants are typically handed out to people who are not under suspicion and are merely in possession of information that the police or prosecutors want.
While the warrants are ostensibly meant to seek the truth and quicken the search for justice, court papers recently filed in a federal lawsuit claim that the Queens district attorney’s office misused a warrant while pursuing a prosecution — a practice that, according to the papers, prosecutors in both Brooklyn and Manhattan have also engaged in occasionally in the last several years. . .