The Brian Lehrer Show

When asked about why the prosecution team chose to put on conflicting witnesses, one of the speakers (not the DA himself - I watched it on NY1) said that to do otherwise would have invited accusations of suppressing "exculpatory evidence," which can be cause for reversal.

I don't know if this was a simple mistaken phrasing or an accidental revelation. Either way, the prosecutor's duty to produce exculpatory evidence is only to the defense team, not to the judge or jury.

Assuming they genuinely felt that the contradictory accounts was "exculpatory," the question is: Why did the prosecutors decide to present those witnesses in the people's case, rather than leave it to the defense to call them?

The only reason I can think of is that they believed the contradictory witnesses would never speak to defense lawyers, much less agree to give their full, detailed, and sometimes conflicting versions of events on the stand.