Police union wary of making list of unreliable witnesses

Under a new policy, the State Attorney’s Office in Orange and Osceola counties could prohibit some repeat state witnesses, including law enforcement officers, from testifying in criminal cases if they are deemed unreliable or dishonest.

State Attorney Aramis Ayala announced the initiative, called the Brady policy, in a news release last week, saying it will help ensure that “the testimony by recurring witnesses is honest and credible.”

But the union that represents Orlando police officers is wary of the new initiative, saying the policy is ambiguous and the committee tasked with identifying potentially bad witnesses lacks a police Ayala perspective.

“They offered no qualifying information on how it would be administered,” said Shawn Dunlap, president of the Fraternal Order of Police union that represents OPD.

Under the new policy, a Brady Committee comprised of senior members of Ayala’s office, including Chief Assistant State Attorney Deborah Barra, Chief Investigative Officer Eric Edwards, two felony bureau chiefs and the director of the office’s Conviction Integrity Unit, would work to investigate witnesses the agency frequently calls to testify in criminal cases who are believed to be not reliable.

The policy’s name refers to Brady v. Maryland, a landmark 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision that requires prosecutors to turn over all potentially exculpatory evidence to defendants in criminal cases. A later decision extended that principle to cover information that calls the credibility of a witness into question.

In last week’s release, Ayala said witnesses could be identified for review by the committee through information from the agency for which they work or through “internal insights that trigger a review by the Committee.”

The Brady committee would then determine whether that witness should be placed on an alert list —signifying to prosecutors that their testimony should be navigated with caution — or an exclusion list — prohibiting the person from testifying in criminal cases entirely.

Dunlap said the policy change came “completely out of the blue.”

He criticized the State Attorney’s Office, saying it has not been clear about what factors the committee will consider in determining if an officer should be deemed not a credible witness, or if a process exists for an officer to be eventually removed from a list.

“I’ve seen nothing that lists what the criteria is. This is very curious to me,” Dunlap said. “… What qualifies you to be on the list?”

At a meeting last week between Ayala and law enforcement leaders around Central Florida, she told agencies a list of questionable witnesses had already been created, an Orange County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson said.

Dunlap said he also saw the list, but would not say who was