CMPD officer lost her police career after accusing a colleague of rape, lawsuit says
Aimee Aquino says she’s lost her police badge and her reputation. Now, she’s suing one of Charlotte-Mecklenburg police’s biggest crime-fighting partners to get them back.
In a new and highly complex federal complaint, Aquino has asked a federal judge to reverse the 2018 decision by Mecklenburg County District Attorney Spencer Merriweather to block her from testifying at criminal or traffic court trials.
The ban, known as a “Giglio letter,” is used by prosecutors when they’re aware of evidence that challenges an officer’s honesty and integrity on the witness stand. It stems from a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court case.
Under the law, prosecutors must disclose the letter and its contents to judges, juries and defendants before an officer testifies. It’s akin to a maitre d’ reading a restaurant’s health code violations before showing customers to their table..
Aquino’s ban came 2 1/2 years after a jury found her guilty of slander in accusing fellow officer and former boyfriend Michael Tinsley of raping her during their two-year relationship.
According to the lawsuit, Aquino did not want to report the incident but was ordered to do so by her superiors after they learned of the alleged assault.
Merriweather, who put the Aquino ban in place during his first year in office, said at the time that the slander verdict undermined her credibility as a witness. Reached by phone Tuesday by The Charlotte Observer, Merriweather declined to comment about Aquino’s lawsuit.
The complaint says the Giglio letter “imposes a stigma and badge of infamy upon Officer Aquino” that effectively ends her career by stripping her of police powers.
She has called on the federal courts to declare Merriweather’s “unilateral decision” an unconstitutional violation of Aquino’s due-process rights and to order the prosecutor to rescind it and/or allow Aquino to defend herself at a public hearing.
The suit, which calls for punitive and compensatory damages for a series of constitutional claims, also names the City of Charlotte, which operates the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. Aquino is also seeking back pay for the time she says she was unfairly kept from working.
City spokeswoman Sandy D’Elosua declined comment Wednesday, citing the pending legal matter.
Aquino’s attorney, Rebecca McNerney of Waxhaw, was not available this week, her office said.
A volatile police relationship
Aquino’s complaint is the third court case to arise from her volatile personal relationship with Tinsley — a relationship which she claims turned violent. Court documents also portray Aquino as stalking Tinsley on the job after the two broke up.
While an internal investigation of Aquino’s complaint did not sustain the rape allegation, a CMPD panel found that Tinsley had impeded the investigation. He was suspended, then, based on what the department and city described as a record of repeated performance violations, eventually fired.
Tinsley sued Aquino in 2014, alleging libel, slander and intentional infliction of emotional distress. In a 2015 settlement following the jury’s slander verdict, Tinsley received $41,000.
He later sued the City of Charlotte on claims of gender and race discrimination — arguing that while Aquino had been disciplined in the matter, he had lost his job.
The jury sided with him on his gender-discrimination claim, and Tinsley received more than $2 million in damages, back pay and legal fees. In a highly unusual move, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the verdict in May, ruling that the jurors lacked sufficient evidence to find that the city discriminated.
The reprisals against Aquino were more gradual and less public. After the slander verdict, according to her lawsuit, she continued to work her beat, testify at trials and received “excellent periodic performance reviews.”
That all changed with the Giglio letter, which Merriweather sent to Aquino in November 2018. He also mailed a copy to then-police Chief Kerr Putney.
‘Good moral character’
According to the lawsuit, Merriweather told Aquino that he believed she told the truth in the Tinsley matter, but that the jury’s verdict in the slander case made it impossible for her to testify.
According to court documents, the four CMPD command officers who heard Aquino’s original rape allegations against Tinsley voted to sustain them. But the findings were vetoed by then-Maj. Johnny Jennings, who had the final say and found insufficient evidence to support the charges, court documents show. Jennings is now CMPD’s chief of police.
The Giglio letter set a series of tumblers in motion, starting at CMPD. There, according to the lawsuit, Aquino’s superiors decided that if she could not testify at trials, she could no longer perform her duties. She was suspended and teed up before the Civil Service Board for firing.
Aquino’s job status remained in limbo for about two years as the board never scheduled her hearing. As such, she could not complete her mandatory police training, which led to the loss of her certification, the lawsuit says.
Merriweather’s office took the additional step of calling on the state Criminal Justice Education and Training Standards Commission to revoke Aquino’s license and certification based on her lack of “good moral character,” the lawsuit claims.
The commission refused, finding in November 2019 that there was no probable cause to believe that Aquino lacked good character.
The Civil Service Board finally heard her case this past July. By then, according to the lawsuit, Aquino had voluntarily taken and passed a lie-detector test regarding her allegations against Tinsley, her lawsuit claims.
On Sept. 10, two years after CMPD had called for her firing, the board refused to do so. Instead, its members handed down a 90-day suspension and returned Aquino to her job.
Her Giglio letter remains in place — despite her lawsuit’s contention that there is “no sustained violation of untruthfulness” from Aquino to justify it.
Aquino is still listed as a police officer in a database of city employees. But for now, CMPD has assigned her to a civilian job devoid of actual police work, according to the lawsuit. The department also is requiring her to retake classes at the Police Academy and state police officer exam before her badge is returned.
According to the lawsuit, Aquino was a reluctant accuser in the first place. She says she was forced to do so by her commanders after she mentioned the alleged assault to a co-worker who reported it up the line.
When she was found guilty by the federal jury of slandering Tinsley, Aquino contemplated an appeal but dropped the idea after being assured by the city that her job was secure, her lawsuit alleges.
Her lawsuit contends that she had a First Amendment-protected right to report that she had been assaulted by a fellow officer.
Instead, she claims, it has destroyed her career.
This story was originally published November 18, 2021 at 6:45 AM.
