Leaders of prominent OAG division resign after failed police prosecution

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The leaders of a high-profile division within the Maryland Office of the Attorney General have resigned after their office failed in its first prosecution of a police officer.

Allison Green, the chief of the Independent Investigations Division, and deputy chief Renee Joy are leaving at the end of this week, according to an OAG spokesperson.

The OAG did not explain why they resigned or if Attorney General Anthony Brown asked them to do so, but their departures follow the pre-trial dismissal of the first criminal prosecution of an officer by the IID, which was formed in 2021 and gained the ability to bring charges in 2023.

The Banner first reported their resignations. Green and Joy could not be reached for comment.

The IID last December charged two Anne Arundel County police officers, Eddie Vasquez and Kieran Schnell, with misconduct for allegedly lying about their role in a fatal car crash in December 2023.

Last month, Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Stacy McCormack dismissed the case because the prosecutors failed to show that they hadn’t used information they were forbidden from using.

After the incident, the officers were compelled to talk to internal investigators in the Anne Arundel County Police Department. Those statements — known as Garrity statements — cannot be used in criminal cases, because they were forced to provide them. A prosecutor’s use of them would violate the defendants’ Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

In such cases, according to the officers’ lawyers, a “taint team” is established to filter out privileged information between the police department and prosecutors. Among the issues in this case was that a member of the “taint team” moved to the trial team, they said.

The defense didn’t have to prove the statements were used; the burden was on the state to prove that they weren’t.

“The court has not made this decision lightly whatsoever,” McCormack said at the hearing. “I have found that the defendants sufficiently raised the issue that Garrity statements may have tainted his case. That is all the defense is required to do — simply raise the issue.”

She said there was a “sheer lack of policies and procedures in the Attorney General’s Office with regard to the compelled statements.”

Last month, the OAG maintained that no privileged information was used, adding, “We are disappointed that the trial court did not allow the IID to demonstrate that fact at the hearing.”

Jonathan Smith, who leads the Civil Rights Division, will serve as interim IID chief, according to OAG communications director Jennifer Donelan. Donelan added that the division “remains under the strategic oversight of Deputy Attorney General Carrie Williams and continues its important work without interruption.”

Green’s job is posted on the OAG’s website, advertising a starting salary of about $135,000 to $191,000. Donelan said a “robust search for new leadership is underway.”

Andrew Jezic, a lawyer who defended one of the officers, said Green and Joy are both “really good lawyers.”

“Both are very experienced and talented prosecutors, and both are a tremendous asset to the attorney general,” Jezic said. “This was an incredibly rare set of facts that few courts around the country have grappled with directly on point, and I just think it’s a real loss for the attorney general.”

He said what made the case unique was that it wasn’t about “actual leakage” of compelled statements into the prosecution, but about the possibility that the state’s case may have been contaminated.

Peter O’Neill, who represented the other officer, declined to comment on the circumstances of Green’s and Joy’s departure. Last month, he said he was “astounded” by the judge finding that the state had no protocols in place.

“If they’re maintaining that (they didn’t use compelled statements), then they should have presented that at the time of the hearing, and they didn’t present that,” O’Neill said.

The IID announced its second prosecution, a fairly similar case, in April. It charged Anne Arundel County police officer Alexander Rodriguez for engaging in an unauthorized high-speed chase that resulted in a Laurel man’s death.

Rodriguez faces charges of manslaughter by vehicle, failing to remain at the scene of an accident resulting in death, and misconduct in office for pursuing without authorization — and without activating police lights or sirens.

Rodriguez’s trial, in Howard County Circuit Court, was scheduled for last month, but it was reset to next January. A motions hearing is scheduled for Nov. 12.

Lawyers for Rodriguez did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

Former state Sen. Jill Carter, D-Baltimore City, an attorney who was a prominent voice for police accountability in the General Assembly, said the dismissal of the cases reflected a “fundamental failure” by the prosecutors.

“The resignations, and the circumstances surrounding them, are deeply concerning because the legislature created this division precisely to ensure impartiality and public trust in police-involved death investigations,” Carter wrote in a text message.

Carter voted in 2023 to give the IID the power to prosecute, saying she “believed the independence of the OAG was likely to produce more reliable, less biased outcomes.”

“When the very first prosecution collapses before trial over Garrity issues, it exposes a fundamental breakdown in the process,” she continued. “The OAG prosecutors failed to create or document safeguards or maintain firewalls between compelled administrative statements and the criminal investigation. This wasn’t a technical error. It was a fundamental failure.”

“There’s a relatively simple fix,” Carter said. “Build the firewall, train the prosecutors, and follow the law.”

This story was updated to include comments by Carter.