A police detective who lied about her relationship with a juror on a murder trial has had allegations of gross misconduct against her proven.
The convictions of three killers were quashed after DC Rebecca Bryant hid the fact that the juror was her son’s girlfriend.
On Wednesday, a police misconduct panel found two allegations against the South Wales officer amounted to gross misconduct and one allegation amounted to misconduct. It found all three charges constituted a breach of standards of professional behaviour.
Bryant, who has been a South Wales officer for 21 years, sent the juror Laura Jones, a text on the eve of the murder trial in which she said: “Don’t tell any of them who you are.”
During the trial, Bryant told Jones she could miss a day of jury service to go to the hairdresser. After complaints were made about Bryant, she initially insisted to a senior officer that she did not know the juror.
The chairman of the misconduct panel, Peter Griffiths QC, said Bryant’s failure to reveal the relationship “did not comprise of a one-off error of judgment” but was a “continuing breach”.
On the charge of lying to a senior officer when complaints were made about the relationship, Griffiths said: “It was a deliberate lie on her part to a senior officer who was investigating a matter of utmost importance.”
The panel found Bryant’s actions in advising Jones to mislead the court so she could attend a hair appointment “fell short of amounting to outright dishonesty” and therefore was not gross misconduct.
But, Griffiths added: “What the officer suggested to Ms Jones was something a police officer should never have suggested in the context of the circumstances. It was certainly not something done by a police officer acting with honesty and integrity.”
Dr Luan Pessol, a psychologist, told the hearing it was “90% probable” Bryant had post-traumatic stress disorder during the trial, triggered by working on the murder case.
But Griffiths said the panel found her clarity of thinking was not impaired before or during the trial to such a degree that it could have interfered with her judgment and actions as an experienced officer.
Bryant’s relationship to Jones was only discovered after Dwayne Edgar, Jake Whelan and Robert Lainsbury were sentenced to life in prison for stabbing 29-year-old Lynford Brewster to death in Cardiff in 2016.
As a result, their convictions were quashed by the court of appeal. All three were jailed for life again after a retrial earlier this year.
The misconduct panel will now consider sanctions against the officer.
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