Mistrial declared for Miami Beach police tech accused of altering records. The reason is ironic

The case against former Miami Beach crime-scene technician Jason Bruder boiled down to this: He was supposed to transfer evidence from a cabinet to the police property room. He didn’t. So to cover up his sloppiness, prosecutors alleged, he later made entries in a police log to make it appear as if he’d actually moved the evidence.

As far as public corruption goes, it wasn’t the sexiest of cases. No evidence was actually lost, no convictions tainted. As Bruder went on trial this week on misdemeanor charges of falsifying public records, there were hours of testimony about paperwork, chain of custody and police protocols.

But the case took a twist Wednesday when it was noticed that copies of key evidence logs, shown to jurors by prosecutors, appeared to have been altered by other members of the Miami Beach Police Department. Because Bruder’s defense lawyer had never been given the logs before trial, Miami-Dade County Judge Jacqueline Woodward declared a mistrial.

“The irony should not be lost on anyone that the public corruption unit is prosecuting someone for falsifying evidence logs and then they get caught submitting evidence logs that were then altered after the fact,” said defense lawyer Michael Grieco.

The Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office must now decide whether to re-try Bruder, 46, who was fired from his job as a technician after he was charged with nine misdemeanors in September 2018. The prosecutor’s office has also asked that Miami Beach police get to the bottom of what happened.

“We have notified the Miami Beach Police Department’s Internal Affairs Unit of the evidence log differences in this case. Our cases are always based on evidence turned over to prosecutors by the investigating police agency,” according to a statement from the State Attorney’s Office. “We are evaluating what impact, if any, the evidence log differences will have on this case going forward.”

A Miami Beach police spokesman, in a statement, said the Internal Affairs unit “is reviewing the matter to determine exactly what transpired. Once the review is complete, our findings will be shared with the State Attorney’s Office.”

Bruder was fired under former Police Chief Daniel Oates.

The mistrial comes at a sensitive time for Miami Beach police. Five officers were charged this month with misdemeanor battery after being accused of using excessive force in arresting two men at the Royal Palm hotel. The department is also under scrutiny for a series of arrests of people filming cops last month.

In Bruder’s case, this is what led to the mistrial: The key evidence was several pages of Miami Beach evidence logs in which technicians are supposed to log evidence in and out of a cabinet inside the crime scene squad office. The evidence is supposed to be processed and moved to the property room within a few days.

The logs had dozens of rows of entries, although only nine were relevant to the charges against Bruder.

After Bruder’s charging in 2018, the State Attorney’s Office turned over the nine-page PDF to his defense lawyer, which had each of the nine relevant rows in question highlighted. That’s required under Florida “discovery” rules — the defense is entitled to review all the evidence.

On one of the pages sent to the defense, there were three empty “date out” boxes indicating that in three unrelated cases, evidence had not been taken out of the locker. But at trial, a copy of that page was entered into evidence and those three boxes had been filled in — suggesting the evidence had been transferred long after it was supposed to, or someone went in after the fact and finally recorded the transfer.

It turned out, months after Bruder’s charging, the police department had sent prosecutors an un-highlighted copy of the same log, and prosecutors did not notice the new entries.

So why is that important? “Their entire case is dependent on the credibility of these documents and my client’s failure to properly make entries,” Grieco said. “Now, these documents aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on.”

Grieco said he hopes the State Attorney’s Office dismisses the case because Bruder has been unable to find a job.

“When you are charged with something like this, you are instantly unemployable,” Grieco said. “He should never have been fired and he should never have been charged criminally.”

This story was originally published August 26, 2021 at 12:41 PM with the headline "Mistrial declared for Miami Beach police tech accused of altering records. The reason is ironic."