As law to make Laurie List public takes effect, officers have a few more months to try to remove their names

Sep. 25—A key provision of the law to make public a list of police officers with credibility problems took effect Friday, and officers named on the state's exculpatory evidence schedule, often called the "Laurie List," now have only a few months to file motions for their names to be removed — before the long-secret list is made public.

In the spring, the state legislature passed a bill outlining a process for making the list public. The law's main provision went into effect on Friday, not with a bang but with a shuffling of paper.

The state Attorney General's Office sent letters to every officer named on the list to notify them of their window to attempt to have their names removed from the list.

Prosecutors are required to give defense attorneys any evidence that might be favorable to a defendant — exculpatory evidence. When police officers whose credibility has been called into question before are part of a criminal case, that could be favorable to a defendant.

The list of those officers makes up the Exculpatory Evidence Schedule, or Laurie list. The list takes its name from a man whose first-degree murder conviction was overturned because of a police officer with a credibility problem.

In some cases, officers who have been suspended for treatment of a mental illness are also named on the list.

Officers' names are added by their chiefs after allegations of misconduct supported by department investigations — for example, if an officer is found to have committed a crime, used excessive force, lied in court or on a police report, or misused their position for power.

News organizations and the American Civil Liberties Union have spent years in litigation, fighting to make the list of credibility-challenged police officers public.

But after the state law was passed this year, the years-long fight to make the list public may be coming to an end. The state Attorney General's Office began the process Friday by sending letters to officers on the list, notifying them of the time they have to file suits to get their names removed.

Now that the notifications have been sent out, police named on the list have a window of a few months to file lawsuits if they think their names should be removed because those investigations or other findings have been overturned. Officers added before April 30, 2018 have six months to file lawsuits; those added later have a three-month window.

The list is set to be released in the coming months, though the names of officers with pending lawsuits to take their names off will be withheld.

If an officer's lawsuit ends, and his or her name is not removed from the list, it will be made public, too.