Baltimore County state’s attorney backs police chief, despite inclusion on ‘Brady list’

Luke Parker

The Baltimore Sun

October 16, 2025

In a 1958 Maryland death penalty trial, the defendant never learned that another man had actually confessed to the murder. The deception in that Anne Arundel County case ultimately reshaped how the government handles evidence across the country.

The resulting “Brady rule,” named after the wronged defendant, requires prosecutors to reveal any exculpatory evidence to defense attorneys. That now includes information on witnesses and law enforcement officers whose past conduct could cast doubt on an investigation. In Baltimore County, that list includes the area’s top cop: Police Chief Robert McCullough.

Police unions have criticized the criteria for getting on such a document as too broad. But to civil rights groups and defense attorneys, they represent an added level of protection to one’s due process.

Annapolis attorney Mandeep Chhabra said if the head of an agency is named, the listing’s effect on the department hinges on the severity of the disclosure.

“Any policy that [McCullough] dictates could be impactful all the way down to a patrol officer,” Chhabra said. “So it creates credibility issues for the entire department.”

Conversely, Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 4 President Dave Rose said if the chief’s Brady issue were dire, his years of steady promotions and the county’s decision to pull him out of retirement to become chief wouldn’t make sense. The Baltimore County Police union leader dismissed the question behind McCullough’s being on the Brady list as “a nothing burger.”

“This is unfair to him,” Rose said.

The Baltimore County Police Department’s media relations team denied multiple requests from The Sun to interview McCullough. However, the chief told The Banner and WJZ this week that a small parking ticket from the 1980s, when he was a cadet, got him on the list. It cost him a $2 fine, according to one outlet, or a $3 fine, according to another, and led to a three-day suspension.

McCullough told those outlets that he did not know he was on the county’s Brady list until it was reported in news media.

In a phone call on Tuesday, Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger said he cannot disclose “the personnel record” that put McCullough on his team’s “Brady Report,” but confirmed the problem incident took place during McCullough’s time as a cadet.

“Despite the recent revelations,” Shellenberger said he will continue to support the chief “in any way I can.”

“He’s been an outstanding partner in fighting crime in Baltimore County,” Shellenberger said. “He has really been leading and modernizing our police department, and he continues to look for ways to move forward … We have a great working relationship, and I hope it continues.”

Effects of police misconduct

Beyond the Brady case that led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling, Maryland courtrooms have seen the effects that misconduct can have on investigations.

In 2017, the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office began reviewing thousands of cases tainted by the city’s Gun Trace Task Force, an aggressive police unit whose high arrest rates were once championed but later found to be the product of corruption, ill will and civil rights violations.

The scandal prompted city prosecutors to reevaluate over 2,000 cases involving indicted officers assigned to or linked with the unit. In 2019, they dumped nearly 800 convictions as civil suits piled in. According to the Baltimore City Comptroller, concerning the Gun Trace Task Force, Baltimore taxpayers have been on the hook for nearly $23 million in legal settlements.

Anne Arundel County public defender Denis O’Connell said while Brady disclosures about a police officer “happen with regularity,” once every couple of months, he cannot remember the last time a case was dismissed over a “big issue.”

Usable witness disclosures are a lot more common with civilians who have a motive to lie, he said, like a detainee seeking favor with the state or an ex-partner — both of whom his legal team cross-examined in a February mass shooting trial in Annapolis.

If a prosecutor knows that an officer or investigator has a credibility problem, O’Connell said the most common result is a better plea offer to a defendant. The state may attempt to work around the police officer in the trial, but he said that’s less likely.

Defense lawyer Bradley Shepherd, who has represented clients in each of Maryland’s 24 jurisdictions, also said dramatic remedies are rare, but that a police officer’s conduct has led two of his cases to be dismissed in roughly the past year.

In one case, Shepherd said “a very serious sex crime allegation” fell apart after the state’s lead detective was “very abruptly” placed on a do-not-call list. Their testimony was struck, and the state dropped the case. Out of respect to his client and the prosecutor who “handled it as admirably as he could have,” Shepherd did not provide other details.

“To this day, I have no clue what that was,” he said of the detective’s offense.

Sheppard said he could have pushed harder to learn what happened, but for him and his client, “the unwrapping of the case” was all they wanted.

“As a practicing defense attorney, that’s great because now I have more ammunition to help my client,” Shepherd said. “But from a societal standpoint, if that prosecution was otherwise meritorious and it is now no longer viable because of this officer’s lack of integrity, that’s a problem.”

Baltimore County’s top cop makes Brady list

Earlier this year, the nonprofit news site MuckRock submitted a public information request to the Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office, asking for “any and all” records concerning impeachable testimony and allegations of misconduct against specific law enforcement officers.

In response, the prosecutors’ office supplied a “Brady Report” naming 90 officers from five agencies. Of those, 82 were or are members of the county’s police department. The list did not include job statuses, though the union president, Rose, said that dozens were retired or dead. One was its current leader.

McCullough, who served more than three decades in the department before he was appointed to its top spot in 2023, was described as “IADISCLOSE” without clarification. That label was the most common in the two-page document. The others were “IADONOTCALL” and “IACLEARED.”

In the days since The Banner first reported the list, the Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office has tried “to get around the law” and find a permissible way to disclose McCullough’s record, Shellenberger said. But as of Tuesday, they still had not.

First elected in Baltimore County in 2007, Shellenberger said his office began developing a “disclosure list” as “the concept of revealing more information about police officers got stronger and stronger” in both written and case law.

The report obtained and published by MuckRock, Shellenberger said, was created to automatically alert prosecutors of an officer’s internal affairs matter if that officer was a part of their case. The government’s lawyer would then look at the notification and decide “if we needed to reveal it to defense counsel,” he said.

Shellenberger told The Sun that he was head of the office when McCullough was put on their Brady report.

Currently, what an “exemplary” officer makes of their career after being placed on the list has no bearing on whether they can be removed from it, he said. Retired officers, for instance, are still named in case one of their cold investigations happens to go to trial — county police have announced murder suspects in two cold cases over the last month.

Acknowledging it’s “obviously…very unfair,” Shellenberger said with one mistake as a “youngster,” they cannot “take that away.”

“The law does not provide for timeout time,” he said.