Jacksonville gang unit detective Josue Garriga III made headlines in July 2024 when he was convicted of coercing a 17-year-old girl to engage in sexual activity. 

Not only was Garriga sentenced to 24 years in prison, but the crime landed him on a list of untrustworthy law enforcement known colloquially as the “Brady List.”

Brady Lists, which were forged out of a series of U.S. Supreme Court rulings, are little-known, locally produced rosters of police officers who commit acts that can range from workplace dishonesty – including actions that might not result in criminal charges – to sexual assault and murder.

Despite screening processes aimed at weeding out unfit recruits, this scarlet letter of sorts offers a striking portrait of officers who run afoul of the same laws they promised to enforce, often but not always resulting in the loss of a job if not freedom.

The Brady List’s purpose is to alert the courts when an officer has credibility issues at a time when records of police misconduct can sometimes be expensive or time-consuming to access. 

Brady Lists ensure that defendants and all those involved in the litigation process are made aware when the officer involved – possibly the principal state witness – has, for instance, testified falsely in the past.

But the implementation of Brady Lists can be inconsistent. A Jacksonville officer who struck a local resident in the face during what started as a traffic stop was recently spared inclusion on the Fourth Judicial Circuit list despite failing to mention the strike in his Response to Resistance report.

He earned only a written reprimand for the omission.

The list maintained by the Fourth Circuit, based in Jacksonville, includes the names of 89 officers across Duval, Clay, and Nassau counties. Like Garriga, most have long since resigned or been fired. Many are in prison. Only two officers on the Brady List remain employed – one by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, according to JSO, and the other by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Of the 89 past and present officers on the Brady List, 22 landed there for battery and assault charges, including three arrests for domestic battery.

Twelve law enforcement officers secured spots for sex-related offenses, three for DUI-related charges, 12 for falsifying records and official documents, 17 for departure-from-the-truth allegations, and four for drug-related infractions.

Some law enforcement officers ended up on the Brady List for two or more violations of the law or police standards.

A series of Supreme Court decisions, including Brady v. Maryland and Giglio v. United States, instructed prosecutors to divulge to judges and defense attorneys potentially detrimental information about officers slated to testify.

More broadly, the rulings established that the state must hand over “Brady material” – evidence that might help support a defendant’s innocence.

“If there is information that could undermine the officer’s credibility, and the state doesn’t keep track of it, then they’re creating an unfair situation for the defense where the defense might not know about information that makes the government’s own case less credible. …If they don’t, it creates a disadvantage to the person who’s charged,” said Rachel Moran, a law professor at St. Thomas University.

What the Supreme Court did not do was provide concrete guidelines as to what type of misconduct merits inclusion on the list. The guidance that was provided has been “terrible,” leading to variations from one judicial circuit to the next, said Tom Hogan, a law enforcement expert and professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston.

“You have prosecutors who are very careful and conservative about it and overestimate what the people need to be on [the Brady List],” Hogan said. “And you have some prosecutors who are much more liberal about it and are less likely to put cops on.”

This affords wide discretion to local state attorneys, who maintain the lists.

The traffic stop involving JSO officer Donald Bowers went viral after the motorist, William McNeil Jr., recorded the incident with his cellphone. Bowers stopped McNeil at 4 in the afternoon for allegedly driving in the rain without headlights. 

That’s a rarely cited statute. But when it is enforced, a majority of drivers pulled over like McNeil are Black, a Florida Trib investigation found. 

In fact, there was another reason – omitted from the original report – that Bowers decided to stop McNeil. The officer told investigators with the department’s integrity unit that he saw the driver leaving an alleged drug house.

After McNeil declined several times to roll down his window and asked Bowers to speak to his supervisor, Bowers smashed the driver’s side window and struck the motorist in the face.

The officer then yanked him out of the vehicle before Bowers and at least two backup officers battered and wrestled the driver to the ground and arrested him.

In his initial report, required when force is used, Bowers made no mention of hitting the motorist before McNeil – who had a knife on the front-seat floor, according to the police – was pulled from the car and hurled to the ground.

After the video showing the strike later went viral on social media, JSO began an investigation into the traffic stop. Bowers was issued a written reprimand for omitting the punch, which the officer argued did not have to be documented because it was “distractionary.”

The State Attorney’s Office for the Fourth Judicial Circuit ultimately decided that Bowers did not knowingly lie despite filing an incorrect report. Bowers was thus spared the ignominy of being included on the Brady List.

“If you were to ask me as a prosecutor, did he lie? I would tell you that I don’t necessarily agree with that because he did not believe it to be, based on his training, the use of force,” said Steve Siegel, executive director of the State Attorney’s Office.

“It was a distraction device that he had been taught to take someone’s attention away while grabbing the keys or trying to distract them for whatever reason. Now, that was very credible.” 

Democratic State Rep. Angie Nixon, who has criticized JSO in the past, took issue with that. 

“It sends a message that JSO was only looking out for JSO when they should be protecting and serving…They should be documenting anytime that their officers are reported for misconduct by the public. At the end of the day, there cannot be any public safety without public trust. And right now, people don’t trust JSO,”  she said.

Attorney Ben Crump, one of two lawyers representing McNeil in the lawsuit against JSO, said Bowers’ handling of the incident is a part of a larger history of the agency’s over-aggressive policing. 

“It was a violation of the Brady rule…Not only do they engage in excessive brutal force, but then they engage in brutal attacks on their constitutional rights and their due process of the law, whether it’s Brady violations, whether they are not giving them fair and transparent investigations.”

“It’s a whole laundry list of things that they deny Black citizens in Jacksonville, Florida, when they have interactions that end up violent with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s office.”

Bowers remains on the job.

When prosecutors choose not to put a cop on the Brady List, especially for acts related to dishonesty, the officer avoids being flagged as damaged goods on the witness stand. 

For The Florida Trib, which partnered with the not-for-profit news collaborative MuckRock in pursuing this story, obtaining Brady Lists across the state was a simple matter of submitting a records request. There was no charge. 

But for the news media and the public at large, obtaining full background information on police officers beyond the list – such as Bowers – can be a tedious, costly process. 

The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office initially charged The Florida Trib $1,275 for the personnel file of a single officer, Garriga. The bill is currently being reduced after it was determined that the documents had already been reviewed and redacted as part of a prior request. At the time of publication, the records had not been provided to The Trib.

A case could be made that even before his conviction in 2024, Garriga merited consideration for being put on the Brady List. Before his arrest, Garriga was involved in two highly controversial traffic stops in Jacksonville.

In December 2019, Garriga fatally shot 19-year-old Florida A&M University student Jamee Johnson during a traffic stop. Johnson was pulled over, police said, for not wearing his seatbelt. 

However, it was later revealed that the seatbelt violation was a mere pretext, and that Garriga and one other officer initiated the stop as part of JSO’s “violent-crime reduction strategy.” That tactic, which some criticize as discriminatory, seeks to use traffic stops to find drugs and guns in neighborhoods where violent crime is prevalent.

Garriga said he shot Johnnon when he appeared to reach for a gun that he told police he owned. After investigating the shooting, State Attorney Melissa Nelson ruled in July 2020 that the officers’ actions were justified. 

Less than a year later, Garriga found himself back in the spotlight along with six other gang unit officers when it was revealed they engaged in a September 2020 text exchange that disparaged people of color, including the recently killed Johnson.

In the group chat entitled “P—y A– Crackers,” Garriga commented on an NFL social justice initiative that honored Johnson and others who lost their lives in encounters with police.

“Why are they recognizing that clown?” he asked.

Garriga, who identifies as Hispanic and Black, later wrote: “Goes to show no matter how wrong they are, they still will be recognized just because they are Black,” followed by a facepalm emoji.

The messages were released to First Coast News as a part of an extensive investigation into alleged racial bias involving the unit, which has come under criticism for its policing of majority Black neighborhoods.

JSO concluded that the gang unit violated the agency’s social media policy, but that allegations of racial bias were “unfounded.” Only one officer – not Garriga – received formal counseling for his comments.

And in September 2023, Garriga was one of four officers involved in the arrest of Le’Keian Woods during a traffic stop that left the motorist with injuries to his eyes and kidneys. Woods was slammed to the ground and beaten by police.

The U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division reviewed the arrest and agreed with JSO’s finding that the officers’ actions did not violate federal civil rights law.

Being on a Brady List does not preclude an officer from serving or testifying. It only requires that his or her background be disclosed to the judge and the defense.

That can affect the outcome of a case, giving leverage to the defense and prompting prosecutors to agree to reduced charges, especially when the officer’s testimony is central.

“You have to go through the analysis on a case-by-case basis. In rare circumstances, it may result in a dismissal.
More commonly, it may result in weakening the state’s case to the point where you get a better resolution or a better outcome,” Fourth Judicial Circuit Public Defender Charlie Cofer said.

In 2023, the Florida Legislature passed a bill that provided additional protections to law enforcement officers related to their potential inclusion on a Brady list.

The legislation prohibits law enforcement agencies from employing disciplinary action against an officer solely based on their inclusion on the list.

Law enforcement officers were also granted the opportunity to request reconsideration (with the support of documents) of the prosecuting agency’s decision to include their name and information in a Brady identification system.

“The reality is when the [new] law was passed there were many steps that were put in the law that I am guessing that many state attorney offices, either as a result of the law or decision that they made before, decided that there was no benefit to them [to maintaining a list], and as a matter of fact, it probably is a pretty big burden,” Miami-Dade Public Defender Carlos Martinez said.

Florida law does not explicitly require prosecutorial agencies to keep a Brady List – as evidenced by the fact that several don’t.

Eight of the 20 state attorneys’ offices in the state told The Florida Trib they do not maintain a Brady List.

In Volusia County, a group of former law enforcement officers, noting the lack of a formal Brady List, banded together to run a website that tracks possible wrongdoing within the local criminal justice system. They call their home-brew list “The Brady Bunch.”

The “Brady Bunch” list, stretching as far back as 2011, includes officers who have committed acts ranging from perjury and lying during internal affairs investigations to child sexual abuse, the authors say. Many of those individuals resigned or were terminated, but a few remain on the job.

Among those in the “Brady Bunch” is Volusia Sheriff Mike Chitwood. The moderators of the website suggested that Chitwood, who was reelected in 2024, made “false public statements” about a shooting incident involving police and two foster children in 2021.

The Volusia Sheriff’s Office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The Fourth Judicial Circuit appears to take its responsibility to maintain a list seriously. Its list includes names, badge numbers, the reason for an individual’s placement on the list, and – if an officer has been terminated – the reason for that. Other Brady Lists received by The Trib lack similar detail.

“It’s our responsibility. The whole reason we have the Brady List is our ethical obligation under the United States Supreme Court case. Brady v. Maryland requires that we turn this information over,” said Siegel, the office spokesman.

How Brady Lists work

Before Brady Lists existed, defense attorneys had to track an individual police officers’ problematic behavior on their own. Sometimes, attorneys knew from working with law enforcement which officers were considered “bad apples,” prompting prosecutors to maintain their own informal list.

“It would have been great if I’d had one when I was the public defender,” said Bill White, who was the Fourth Judicial Circuit’s public defender from 2005-2009 after spending years as an assistant public defender. 

A spot on the list is not necessarily permanent. The State Attorney’s Office has the authority to remove names from the list.

JSO Sgt. John C. Nobles was added to the Brady List in 2018 when Circuit Judge Bruce Anderson described Nobles’ testimony as “specifically not credible” in an eight-page order. 

Nobles was one of two officers involved in the Aug. 21, 2016, arrest of Marquis Ihkeem Jerome Jackson for a traffic-stop-turned-drug bust. During the deposition, Nobles initially claimed that he stopped Jackson because the motorist nearly T-boned a JSO-marked vehicle and was not wearing a seat belt.

A year after giving that sworn statement during an internal affairs investigation, Nobles changed key details, acknowledging he was mistaken about the direction the motorist was traveling. Jackson’s lawyer was also able to demonstrate that it would have been physically impossible for the officer to see whether Jackson was wearing a seat belt before the stop.

The defendant’s request to suppress all evidence resulting from the traffic stop was approved and the case was dropped.

But four years later, the Fourth Circuit State Attorney’s Office requested that Judge Anderson “clarify” his 2018 opinion that determined Nobles to be untrustworthy. Nobles, who had protested for years that he did not belong on the list, was removed in April 2022. He is still on the job.

JSO denied The Trib’s requests to interview Officers Bowers and Nobles.

Being the subject of an active criminal investigation is also considered grounds for being put on the list, Siegel said.

If the charge is dismissed or the case is resolved favorably, the officer will be removed from the list, he said.

While Florida law does not actually mandate that a prosecuting agency maintain Brady identification, police departments across the state are required to report sustained officer misconduct to the corresponding state attorney’s office. 

Experts argue that without a uniform way to track dishonest officers throughout Florida, loopholes are created. 

As a result, officers with a history of dishonesty who leave one department can end up working for another.

“The decentralized nature of law enforcement in the U.S. makes enforcing Brady and Giglio a very difficult model. It’s not like we have one master list of everybody in the United States,” Hogan said.

With over 18,000 local, state and federal law enforcement agencies across the nation, many police departments do not keep track of Brady violations across county or state lines because it is simply too laborious.

“And, yes, the wandering police officer can get in trouble in one place and move somewhere else. It’s really hard these days, because the police are having so much trouble recruiting, they’re lowering their standards and allowing more people into the system,” Hogan said.

Maintaining a Brady List is one way to ensure the transparency and integrity of the justice system, White said.

“Part of a police officer’s job is to protect and serve. It’s also to protect the innocent. So it’s even more important than ever for defense counsel to play that role and to challenge law enforcement to do a better job,” White said.

This project was completed with the support of a grant from Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights in conjunction with Arnold Ventures, which funded MuckRock to support this reporting.