Illustration for FOIA 25-239: The Brady/Giglio list
FOIA 25-239 · Granted in part, denied in part

On October 10, 2025, a requester faxed the Delta County Prosecutor's Office a request for records identifying law enforcement officers with sustained credibility or honesty findings — the kind of finding that must be turned over to a criminal defendant as Brady or Giglio material. It was one of seven requests the office logged that day under numbers 25-239 through 25-245. On October 30, 2025, FOIA Coordinator Emily Desalvo answered all seven in a single letter. Of the seven, 25-239 is the only one in which the office did not certify the central record nonexistent. It granted the request in part and denied it in part, and in doing so it told the requester, in plain language, how the office actually handles officer-credibility information.

That answer is the reason this file matters. Asked for the date of the most recent update to its officer-credibility records, the office wrote that “it is the practice of the Delta County Prosecutor's Office to request information as it becomes known to the Prosecutor's Office, or is requested by Defense Counsel.” That is not a description of a maintained list. It is a description of a system that runs on demand — when a defense lawyer asks, or when a fact happens to surface. The responsive documents show that mechanism working, and they also show what it produces: an April 2025 email in which the Michigan State Police told the office that a memo referenced in a written reprimand “was rescinded, so one was never created.”

This page reads the 137-page responsive packet and the 38-page response file page by page. It separates what the office produced from what its cover letter said it produced, and it distinguishes two entirely different discipline matters that the packet places side by side — an Escanaba police officer investigated by the State Police over retained license plates, and a State Police trooper who settled a separate internal-affairs case. They are not the same officer, the same agency, or the same case, and treating them as one would be an error the record does not support.

How to read this page

Documented facts come directly from the released records and are dated and paginated. The agency's position is what the office asserted or did. Legal interpretation is analysis of Michigan's Freedom of Information Act and is labeled as such. Open questions are issues the released record does not resolve. Nothing on this page asserts that any denial was unlawful, that any fee was improper, or that anyone acted in bad faith. Where the record supports only a question, only a question is stated.

Summary

FOIA 25-239 asked three things. First, for any list, memo, database, spreadsheet, or communication identifying officers whose credibility, honesty, or integrity is compromised or subject to a Brady/Giglio disclosure obligation. Second, for the written policy, memo, or procedure the office uses to track, evaluate, and disclose that information. Third, for the date of the most recent update to those records. The office answered each part separately, and the three answers do not describe the same system.

On the first part the office granted in part and denied in part. It listed nine items as granted, including a Michigan State Police report, two 2017 letters to a State Police lieutenant, two email chains, a statement of charges, and a settlement agreement. It then invoked exemptions under MCL 15.243(1)(a), (1)(w), (1)(s)(iii), (1)(b)(iii), and (1)(d), the last “exempted pursuant to MCL 423.507,” and applied redactions. On the second part it granted the request cleanly and listed twelve documents, most of them Brady/Giglio reference guides the office keeps on file. On the third part it granted the request and pointed to an April 16, 2025 email as the most recent update.

Read together, the three answers describe a system that runs on request rather than on a maintained index. The office does not say it keeps a list. It says it requests information as it becomes known or as defense counsel asks for it. That is a lawful way to operate. It is also a way to operate that depends entirely on the memory and diligence of the people involved — and the packet contains at least one document showing where that dependency breaks down.

What was requested

The request is dated October 10, 2025 and was transmitted by fax. The fax platform's receipt records delivery at 10.10.2025 06:13:14 −04:00, one page, from a transmitting station identifier that is redacted here because it is tied to the requester's fax line. The request was captioned “FOIA Request — Records Identifying Law Enforcement Officers with Sustained Credibility or Honesty Findings (‘Brady/Giglio List’),” and it asked for:

“1. Any list, memo, database, spreadsheet, or communication that identifies law enforcement officers whose credibility, honesty, or integrity is compromised or subject to a Brady/Giglio disclosure obligation.

2. Any written policy, memo, or procedure for tracking, evaluating, or disclosing officer credibility or impeachment information.

3. The date of the most recent update to any such records.”

The request also contained a narrowing paragraph that matters to how the office's exemptions should be read. The requester wrote:

“For clarity: I am not requesting disclosure of any ongoing investigative materials, personnel files, or non-final internal deliberations. This request is limited to final or maintained records that identify officers who are known to have sustained findings or credibility issues relevant to Brady/Giglio disclosure obligations.”

Three procedural provisions rounded out the request. It asked that any exempt material be segregated and the remainder released, citing MCL 15.244(1). It asked for electronic delivery in PDF or text. And it asked that “all copying and labor fees be waived under the public-interest provision of MCL 15.234(1), as the purpose of this request is to promote transparency and public understanding of prosecutorial disclosure practices, not for commercial use.” It closed by asking for a response within five business days under MCL 15.235(2), or a written extension under subsection (2)(d).

There is a small but real discrepancy in the receipt record. The fax landed on October 10. The office's own Notice of Denial form records “Date Received 10/10/2025.” But the response letter states that the requests were “dated October 10, 2025, received October 13, 2025.” The difference is a weekend: October 10, 2025 was a Friday and October 13 was the following Monday. The office's letter counts from Monday. That choice moves every downstream deadline by one business day, and it is worth noting for that reason alone.

There is also a documented email exchange about delivery. At 8:32 a.m. on October 10, Tracy Lantagne of Delta County Administration wrote to the requester that the email address was missing from the submission. The requester replied at 8:39 a.m. confirming the address. The office therefore had the request, and a working return address, on the day it arrived.

The paper trail

Figure 1 · One request, one extension, one answer

Select any date to read what happened and which clock it started or stopped.

Figure 1. Dates from the response letter dated October 30, 2025, the request dated October 10, 2025, the fax receipt, and the Notice to Extend Response form. Statutory deadlines computed under MCL 15.235. The response was timely on either receipt date.

October 10–16, 2025 — the request arrives, and the clock is started twice

Documented: The fax receipt is unambiguous: the transmission landed on October 10, 2025 at 06:13:14 Eastern. The office's own Notice of Denial form records “Date Received 10/10/2025.” But the cover letter signed on October 30 states the requests were “received October 13, 2025.” That is a three-day gap, and it is the difference between a Friday and the following Monday.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: Under MCL 15.235(2) a public body has five business days to grant, deny, or extend. Counting from Friday, October 10, the fifth business day is Friday, October 17. Counting from Monday, October 13, the fifth business day is Monday, October 20. Add the single permitted ten-business-day extension and the outer limits become October 31 and November 3 respectively. The response was issued October 30 — one day inside the earlier ceiling and four days inside the later one. On this file the choice of receipt date did not decide the outcome; the answer was timely either way. It is noted because a public body that controls the receipt date controls the deadline, and in this archive that has mattered before.

October 16, 2025 — the extension

Documented: The response letter states plainly that “an extension was filed on October 16, 2025 by the Public Body.” The Notice to Extend Response form checks the first listed reason for extension: that the county “needs to search for, or review a voluminous amount of separate and distinct public records.” It names the requester and the return address (redacted here).

This is the strongest procedural document in the file, and it is worth saying so. The extension was filed on October 16 — inside the original five-business-day window that ran from October 13 — and the office said so on the face of its response. That is what MCL 15.235(2)(d) requires. It is a direct contrast with FOIA 25-201, where the same office sent an extension notice with a blank date field, leaving the requester unable to confirm from the document itself that the notice was timely.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: A dated extension filed inside the window is the clean case. The only question the form leaves open is whether the “voluminous amount” predicate was actually evaluated, since the seven requests filed that day covered a wide range of records and the form does not say which one the volume finding attached to. That is a gap in the reasoning, not in the procedure. The procedure itself was followed.

October 30, 2025 — one letter for seven requests

Documented: The response is a single letter, signed by Emily Desalvo as FOIA Coordinator, answering requests 25-239 through 25-245. It addresses each request in turn, states a determination for each numbered part, and closes with the standard appeal-rights paragraph. It encloses a FOIA Appeal Form and a link to the county's FOIA page.

Answering seven requests in one letter is efficient, and nothing in FOIA forbids it. But it has a cost that shows up in this file: the letter's itemization of what was granted is not always matched by what is actually in the packet. That mismatch is the subject of the next section.

What the office produced, and what the letter says it produced

The letter lists nine items as granted on part one. The responsive packet contains documents that correspond to seven of them. Two of the nine cannot be matched to any page by the date given, and one document in the packet is not listed in the letter at all.

Part one: the nine items the letter says were granted, against the packet
Item as listed in the October 30 letterWhere it appearsNotes
Email communication dated 01/10/2024—No email bearing this date appears in the packet.
Memo entitled dated 01/10/2024—No memo bearing this date appears. The entry has no title on its face — the word “entitled” is followed by nothing.
Michigan State Police Report 80-02-24pp. 4–12Produced. The report itself bears Incident No. 080-0000002-24.
Memo to Lt Cunningham dated 12/28/2017pp. 13–14Produced. It is a letter on Delta County letterhead, signed by Jessica E. Pelto, not a memo.
Memo to Lt Cunningham dated 12/28/2017 (second)pp. 15–16Produced. A second letter, same date and addressee, signed by Lauren M. Wickman.
Email communication dated 05/10/2024pp. 22–24Produced. Concerns Trooper Colin Immel and the Gladstone Post.
Email communication dated 04/16/2025pp. 17–20Produced. Concerns “MSP Report 80-163-23” and a defense demand for Brady material.
Statement of Charges/Proposed Discipline dated 12/26/2023p. 25Produced. The form’s “Date of Statement” is 12/21/2023; the employee signed it 12-26-23.
Settlement Agreement dated 01/11/2024pp. 26–27Produced. Resolves the same internal-affairs case as the Statement of Charges.
Not listed in the letterp. 21A completed Brady/Giglio Compliance Form appears in the packet but is not itemized in the letter.

Two things follow from that table, and neither requires an inference about motive. The first is that the itemization is incomplete: two listed items cannot be located, and one produced document is not listed. A requester reading only the cover letter would not know the compliance form exists, and would not know that two of the nine granted items are missing from what was actually delivered. The second is that the letter's own labels are loose. It calls two letters “memos,” and it lists a “Memo entitled dated 01/10/2024” without ever stating what the memo is entitled to.

None of that is a denial. The office granted these items, and most of them are in the packet. The problem is verification: a cover letter that does not accurately describe its own production makes it harder for a requester to know what was withheld and what was simply never there.

The 2017 letters: the office's own template, and what it told the police

Pages 13 through 16 are the most instructive documents in the packet, because they are the office's own working template for collecting officer-credibility information. They are not memos. They are letters on Delta County Prosecuting Attorney letterhead, both dated December 28, 2017, both addressed to Lt. Greg Cunningham, Michigan State Police, Gladstone Post, Gladstone, MI 49837, and both captioned “Re: People v. _______, Brady/Giglio Letter.” The blank case-name line is part of the form.

One letter is signed by Jessica E. Pelto, then Chief Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, with the initials JEP/kc. The other is signed by Lauren M. Wickman, then Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, with the initials LMW/kc. The second signature is the one that matters for this archive: the person who now holds the office personally signed one of these letters in 2017, which means the office's Brady/Giglio collection practice is not something she inherited without knowledge of it.

The letters recite the governing authorities — Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150, 154 (1972); Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 87 (1963); MCR 6.201(b); United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 107 (1976); and Strickler v. Greene, 527 U.S. 263, 280–281 (1999) — and then list four categories of information the prosecutor asks the police to disclose: substantiated or sustained findings of misconduct relating to dishonesty, regardless of discipline; criminal convictions; In Lieu of Action agreements; and current or ongoing investigations. They ask the agency to complete an attached “Brady/Giglio compliance form.”

Then comes the sentence that defines the outer edge of the practice:

“Please note unsubstantiated findings, findings which are not credible, or instances of exoneration are not required to be disclosed to the prosecutor.”

That sentence is legally defensible. A prosecutor is not obligated to treat an unsubstantiated complaint as impeachment material, and an exoneration is the opposite of a sustained finding. But the sentence also does real work in the other direction: it tells the police agency that the office does not want the negative results, only the sustained ones. A collection system that asks only for sustained findings will, by design, never contain the complaints that were investigated and not sustained — which is exactly the category a defense lawyer sometimes needs to see.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: The distinction between “sustained” and “unsubstantiated” findings is not a loophole; it tracks how Giglio material is usually understood. The question the letters raise is narrower. If the office's only channel for learning about officer credibility is a form that asks for sustained findings and expressly excludes the rest, then the completeness of the office's knowledge depends on the police agency's judgment about what counts as “sustained.” The April 2025 email examined below shows that judgment being exercised, and shows it producing an incomplete record.

The MSP report: an outside investigation that ends at the prosecutor's door

Pages 4 through 12 are a Michigan State Police original incident report, Incident No. 080-0000002-24, nine pages, printed January 4, 2024 and investigated by Lt. Paul Campbell of the MSP Eighth District Headquarters in Delta County. The complainant is John Gudwer, Director of Public Safety for the City of Escanaba. The subject is Cole David Tianen, an Escanaba Public Safety officer.

The report describes how the investigation began. On December 26, 2023, a State Police detective sergeant advised Gudwer that Gudwer had requested an MSP internal investigation. The underlying event was a disclosure Tianen made on November 25, 2023, at about 5:00 p.m., to Lt. Jeffrey Erickson. Tianen told Erickson that he kept confiscated license plates at his residence and displayed them in his basement. He later turned over seven Michigan passenger plates and one motorcycle plate.

The significance is in the paperwork. Reports had recorded the plates as “confiscated and destroyed” or “disposed of.” Gudwer contacted Prosecutor Lauren Wickman, who advised that the conduct could violate MCL 257.901 and recommended that another agency investigate. In a January 3, 2024 interview, Tianen admitted that he knew the report language “was not a true representation.” The report also records that Tianen, when asked, “indicated that he was unaware” of the Brady/Giglio concern the investigating lieutenant flagged.

The report's status line reads: “Open pending review at the Delta County PA Office.” That is the sentence that ties this document to FOIA 25-239. An outside agency investigated a local officer, documented a false report entry, and sent the file to the prosecutor's office for review. Whether that review produced a sustained finding, a declination, or nothing at all is not stated in this packet.

Tianen's explanation, as recorded, was that the plates “were a reflection of the good work that he does and is a reminder for him of that good work.” The report cites department policy sections 4.38(B) and 4.39(A)(a), (B), and (C), and names Captain Darren D. Smith and Lt. Jeffrey M. Erickson in the review chain.

Open question: The packet does not contain the outcome of the prosecutor's review of this file. If the review produced a sustained credibility finding, it would be exactly the kind of record 25-239 was written to reach. If it produced no finding, that is also a fact a requester would want. Either way, the document that would show the result is not in the production.

The Immel settlement: a second officer, a different agency, a different case

Pages 25 through 27 are a separate matter entirely, and it is important not to merge it with the Tianen file. The officer here is Colin T. Immel, a Michigan State Police trooper assigned to the Gladstone Post, employee ID 1140763, hired June 4, 2017. The case is Internal Affairs number PSS-683-23. The subject is not Escanaba and not the license plates.

Page 25 is a Statement of Charges and Proposed Discipline on MSP form PER-65, stamped received January 2, 2024, with a “Date of Statement” of December 21, 2023. It describes a Professional Standards investigation that established an inappropriate text conversation with an intended confidential informant, and an attempt to conceal it by extending the scope of a consent search and deleting text messages from the informant's phone. The work rules cited are Official Order No. 02-01, Code of Conduct, Sections 4.5, 4.6, and 4.25 (Official Orders 7 and 17). The location is Schoolcraft County. The proposed discipline is a ten-day suspension, with a disciplinary conference set for January 11, 2024 at the St. Ignace Post. The employee signed on December 26, 2023.

Pages 26 and 27 are the Settlement Agreement that resolved the case, under Discipline No. D-MSPTA-215-23, between the Department of State Police and the Michigan State Troopers Association. Immel admits violating Code of Conduct Sections 4.5, 4.6, and 4.25. The ten-day suspension is split: five days served, structured as sixteen hours of lost time within the next two pay periods plus forfeiture of twenty-four hours of annual time, and five days held in abeyance until January 11, 2026. He becomes eligible for selection on that date. The agreement is signed January 11, 2024 and contains a non-precedential clause.

The May 10, 2024 email chain on pages 22 through 24 is how this settlement reached the prosecutor's office. Prosecutor Wickman wrote to the State Police requesting “any information under Brady disclosures for Tpr Colin Immel from the Gladstone Post.” The reply came from the MSP Professional Standards Section and forwarded to MSP Labor Relations. The Labor Relations reply, on May 13, 2024, stated: “Attached are the two Giglio concerns that I found for the referenced member. Note, the order for a memo referenced in the Written Reprimand was rescinded, so one was never created.” One attachment, “Immel, Colin - Giglio Concern.PDF,” is listed at 458 KB.

That sentence — “the order for a memo referenced in the Written Reprimand was rescinded, so one was never created” — is the single best piece of evidence in the file for how a request-driven system fails. The reprimand referenced a memo. The memo was never written, because the order that would have required it was rescinded. When the prosecutor's office asked for Brady material, the State Police reported what it found and disclosed the gap. The system worked here because someone asked. It is not clear it would have worked if no one had.

The pattern across the seven requests

FOIA 25-239 was one of seven requests filed the same day. The other six, answered in the same letter, describe the office's position on officer-credibility records from different angles — and the angles do not all point the same way.

Request 25-242 asked, among other things, for any “do-not-call list,” list of “Giglio-impaired officers,” or officer-credibility tracking record. The office denied that part under MCL 15.243(1)(m). Request 25-243 asked for a list or export of cases flagged for Brady/Giglio, credibility, or declination reasons from the case management system. The office granted that part in part, quoting a fee for searching roughly 800 cases a year across six years. Request 25-239, the file on this page, says the office does not maintain a list and instead requests information case by case.

Those are three different descriptions of the same capability, delivered in one letter. One part says there is no list. One part denies a list under an exemption. One part offers to export flags from a database. They may each be true in a narrow sense — a “do-not-call list” is not the same thing as a case-management flag, and neither is the same thing as a case-by-case email practice. But a requester reading all seven answers together is left without a clear picture of what the office actually maintains, which is the question FOIA exists to answer.

Formal issues in the partial denial

Three points about the denial deserve to be stated precisely, because they are about the form of the answer rather than its substance.

First, a citation that does not resolve. The denial paragraph cites “MCL 15.234(1)(s)(ix).” MCL 15.234 is the fee provision of FOIA, and it has no subsection (s). The same string appears in the next paragraph as “MCL 15.243(1)(s)(ix),” which is the exemptions provision. The likely explanation is a typographical transposition. But a denial that cites the wrong statute is a denial a requester cannot fully evaluate without guessing what was meant.

Second, an exemption cited without explanation. The letter invokes “MCL 15.243(1)(d) exempted pursuant to MCL 423.507.” MCL 423.507 is part of the Public Employment Relations Act. Citing it alongside the FOIA exemption, without saying what record it applies to or why, leaves the requester to reconstruct the reasoning. FOIA requires a public body to state the basis for a denial with enough specificity that the requester can decide whether to appeal.

Third, the segregation demand was not addressed. The request expressly invoked MCL 15.244(1), which requires a public body to separate exempt material from nonexempt material and release the rest. The letter applies redactions, which is a form of segregation, but it does not say what was redacted, how much, or on what basis for each item. The Notice of Denial form checks the “Redaction” box and the “Exempt from Disclosure” box, but the form's handwritten explanation is general rather than item-specific.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: None of these defects, standing alone, makes the denial unlawful. A court might well find that the office substantially complied, and the exemptions it invoked are real exemptions. The point is narrower: the answer is hard to test. A requester cannot tell from this letter which record was withheld under which exemption, how much of each record was redacted, or whether the segregation the request demanded actually happened. That is a transparency problem even where the legal result is correct.

Authorities consulted

Show the statutes, cases, and sources cited on this page

The statutory analysis above rests on the text of the Michigan Freedom of Information Act as published by the Michigan Legislature. The provisions most directly engaged are MCL 15.233 (public body's obligation to provide records or certify nonexistence), MCL 15.234 (fees, including the public-interest waiver provision the requester invoked), MCL 15.235 (five business days, one extension of up to ten business days under unusual circumstances), MCL 15.240 (written appeal and 180-day civil action), MCL 15.243 (exemptions, including subsections (1)(a), (1)(b)(iii), (1)(d), (1)(m), (1)(s)(iii), and (1)(w)), and MCL 15.244 (segregation of exempt material and release of the remainder).

The Brady and Giglio framework is drawn from the cases the office itself cites in its 2017 letters and in the reference materials it produced: Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963); Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150 (1972); United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97 (1976); Strickler v. Greene, 527 U.S. 263 (1999); and MCR 6.201(b). The office's produced Brady/Giglio reference set also cites Kyles v. Whitley, United States v. Bagley, People v. Chenault, 495 Mich. 142 (2014), and Cunningham v. Shoop, 23 F.4th 636 (6th Cir. 2022), among others.

The discipline records come from the Michigan State Police (Incident No. 080-0000002-24, form PER-65, and Internal Affairs case PSS-683-23) and from the Settlement Agreement under Discipline No. D-MSPTA-215-23. The policy references are to the office's produced Brady/Giglio guides dated August 22, 2023 and April 1, 2025, and to the Prosecuting Attorneys Coordinating Council's Brady & Giglio: A Prosecutor's Guide (May 2021) and the Michigan Prosecutors' Justice Initiative Best Practice Recommendations (2023).

What would change this picture

Three records, if produced, would resolve most of the open questions on this page. First, the outcome of the prosecutor's review of the Tianen file — the document that would show whether the “Open pending review at the Delta County PA Office” status ever closed, and how. Second, the two items the letter lists as granted but which do not appear in the packet, both dated 01/10/2024. Third, any internal record showing how the office decides, case by case, which officer-credibility information to seek — the practice the part-three answer describes but does not document.

None of these requires a new legal theory. They are specific documents with specific dates, and a narrowed follow-up request naming them directly would test the office's answers without arguing about characterization.

Open questions

  • What was the outcome of the prosecutor's review of MSP Incident No. 080-0000002-24, and is there a document that records it?
  • What are the two 01/10/2024 items the letter lists as granted, and why do they not appear in the packet?
  • What record does the office withhold under MCL 15.243(1)(d) “exempted pursuant to MCL 423.507,” and why is that citation not explained?
  • How does the office reconcile its part-one answer (no maintained list, case-by-case practice) with 25-242's denial of a credibility-tracking list and 25-243's offer to export case-management flags?
  • Did the office address the MCL 15.244(1) segregation demand item by item, and if so, where is that shown?
  • Was the public-interest fee waiver under MCL 15.234(1) considered, and what was the reasoning?
Bottom line

FOIA 25-239 is the rare file in this archive where the office did not close the door with a certificate of nonexistence. It opened it, produced a substantial packet, and in doing so described a system that collects officer-credibility information on request rather than from a maintained index. That is a lawful system. The documents in the packet — the 2017 template that asks only for sustained findings, the April 2025 email disclosing that a referenced memo was never written, and the Tianen file still marked open — show what such a system produces and where it can fail. The page states what the record shows and leaves the rest as questions, because that is what the record supports.

Correlation note — added October 25, 2026. FOIA 25-240, now in this archive, is the request faxed to the same office on the same morning as this one and answered in the same October 30, 2025 letter. The two files are the sharpest contrast in the archive. This request asked for a compiled record of officer-credibility findings and received 137 pages at no charge, a partial grant, and a plain-language explanation of a case-by-case practice. 25-240 asked how the office reviews officer use-of-force and received three certificates of nonexistence, one narrow partial grant, and a $1,863.00 estimate with a $931.50 deposit before the search would begin. The requester asked for a public-interest fee waiver under MCL 15.234(1) in both letters; this file was answered without a charge, and on 25-240 the county’s cost itemization leaves both waiver boxes blank. The most specific overlap is part three of 25-240, which asked for any written policy for evaluating officer-involved force and was certified nonexistent — in the same letter that produced the twelve written Brady/Giglio disclosure-policy documents listed on this page. The office keeps, and readily releases, written standards for one prosecutorial decision and certifies that it keeps none for the other.

Documents

These are redacted copies prepared for publication. Requester names, home addresses, personal phone numbers, and email addresses have been removed. Unredacted originals are not hosted on the public web server.