The Other Brady Rights

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

Abstract

This Comment explores a critical, yet unexamined feature of Brady doctrine: police officers’ rights in Brady disclosures. Prosecutors disclosing from officers’ personnel files must consider and respect officers’ procedural and substantive due process rights. Examining those rights also requires understanding the tools the government uses to carry out disclosure. So, this article examines the software applications that departments use to identify Giglio material and provide it to defendants, the first account of such applications. Many city police departments rely on IA Pro, an internal affairs software program. Others are just starting to shift to digital data collection, opening new avenues for compliance, tracking, and disclosure. Police unions tend to resist technological changes like these, foreseeing threats to their livelihoods. This is unfortunate--good software development and practice could protect officers’ interests just much as bad development and practice can hurt them. If prosecutors and police departments build and adopt software with the right features, they can better comply with Brady’s demands for defendants while protecting officers’ rights in the process. This Comment discusses how to do that and proceeds in four parts. Part I explains the Brady rule with respect to police personnel files. Part II reviews how police departments use software to track misconduct and comply (or fail to comply) with Brady. Part III examines the FOP’s lawsuit to understand police officers’ due process rights in the face of Brady lists and disclosures. Finally, Part IV argues for two categories of improvements to software development and practice--those that facilitate Brady compliance and those that protect officers’ rights.

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