Almendarez, Andres

The United States Department of Justice is not in compliance with its Brady/Giglio disclosure obligations. The Department acknowledges in its own Justice Manual that prosecutors must disclose material exculpatory and impeachment evidence, that those duties arise from the constitutional guarantee of a fair trial, and that federal prosecutors must seek such information from all members of the prosecution team, including law enforcement officers and other government officials participating in the investigation or prosecution. 

Despite that obligation, DOJ has failed to maintain, publish, integrate, or operationalize a reliable national Brady disclosure system for federal law enforcement misconduct. DOJ created the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database (NLEAD) to document federal officer misconduct, including criminal convictions, terminations related to misconduct, suspensions of enforcement authority, resignations or retirements during serious-misconduct investigations, sustained complaints, false reports, false statements under oath, obstruction of justice, excessive force, bias, discrimination, theft, and sexual misconduct. By September 20, 2024, NLEAD contained 4,790 federal officer misconduct records involving 4,011 federal law enforcement officers. 

DOJ then decommissioned NLEAD after Executive Order 14074 was revoked, declaring that the database is “no longer active” and that DOJ “will not publish any additional reports.” That decision eliminated the only federal misconduct database specifically structured to identify officer-level impeachment material across federal law enforcement agencies. 

DOJ’s remaining public systems do not cure the failure. The National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) remains a crime-statistics system, not a Brady disclosure system. NIBRS captures incident-level crime data, including victims, known offenders, arrestees, property, location, time, clearance status, and offense circumstances; it does not function as a national index of officer impeachment material, prosecutor notice, Giglio determinations, sustained misconduct, false statements, decertification, disciplinary history, or witness reliability even though it contains large amounts or relevant evidence.

The National Decertification Index (NDI), operated by the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training (IADLEST), also does not cure DOJ’s failure. NDI is a pointer system for officer decertification records, not a public Brady disclosure database. IADLEST describes NDI access as limited to requesters working for, or on behalf of, authorized POST or law enforcement agencies. DOJ has continued supporting NDI through restricted-access law-enforcement infrastructure, including a FY2024 non-competitive Bureau of Justice Assistance solicitation for the National Decertification Index and IADLEST reporting that DOJ was funding the NDI redesign project. 

The participation and usage record confirms the insufficiency of DOJ’s approach. NLEAD covered more than 148,000 federal law enforcement officers, with the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice accounting for 84% of covered officers and 88% of recorded misconduct incidents. Yet from January 1, 2024, through August 31, 2024, only 58% of authorized federal agencies conducted even one search of NLEAD. Among Offices of Inspectors General, only 18 of 40 reported incidents for 2018–2023, while 22 reported zero qualifying incidents. 

The Brady List therefore declares DOJ not in compliance. A department that prosecutes criminal cases, supervises federal law enforcement, funds private-access misconduct indexes, decommissions its own federal misconduct database, fails to provide a public Brady/Giglio disclosure system, and leaves defense counsel, courts, and the public without reliable access to officer impeachment material cannot credibly claim constitutional compliance. DOJ’s failure is structural, national, and continuing.