Pubdate: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 Source: Asbury Park Press (NJ) Contact: http://www.injersey.com/app/ Forum: http://chat.injersey.com/ Author: Associated Press N.J. COULD DROP MANY DRUG CASES: RACE PROFILING DISCLOSURES TRIGGER REVIEW TRENTON -- After admitting that the state's war on drugs unfairly victimized minority drivers, New Jersey's attorney general may drop drug charges against hundreds of motorists who claim they were pulled over because of their race. The state also could be forced to settle dozens of lawsuits filed by black and Hispanic state troopers who allege they were forced to practice racial profiling. Attorneys for the motorists and the troopers returned to a state reading room yesterday to resume searching nearly 100,000 pages of records, many marked confidential and never before made public. Attorney General John J. Farmer Jr. made the documents public Monday. Collected in 185 binders now on public display, the records show troopers systematically selected minority drivers in searches for drugs. New Jersey's top law enforcement officials knew that since at least 1989, but didn't admit racial profiling was widespread until an April 1999 report. That report came a year after two troopers fired 11 shots at a van they had stopped for speeding on the New Jersey Turnpike. Three of the four men inside, all minorities, were wounded. Criminal charges against the two troopers were dismissed by a judge, but the state is appealing that ruling. "The constitutional violations are so egregious and they've been sitting on these documents for years," Public Defender Kevin Walker said yesterday. Walker, who represents several defendants stopped on the turnpike, said the state's only option is to dismiss the charges. His office is considering a court motion to ask just that. "If they're talking about settlement, if they're taking that approach with the civil cases, it's certainly more important with the criminal ones because of the constitutional violations," Walker said. Farmer said his office would review each pending criminal case in which bias allegedly tainted drug seizures. Criminal charges could be dropped, he said. The civil lawsuits also will be examined with an eye toward settlements. "Where they are reasonable, we're going to settle these cases," Farmer said Monday. "We'll certainly look at it a lot more closely based on what we've discovered." In a telephone interview yesterday from California, Gov. Whitman praised Farmer for his decision to release the paperwork. Whitman also had praise for his predecessor, Peter G. Verniero. Some have suggested Verniero, who is now a justice of the state Supreme Court, failed to deal with racial profiling and attempted to thwart an investigation by the U.S. Justice Department. "He's the one who started the process of really going after it," Whitman said of Verniero. Verniero's department conducted an unprecedented investigation into State Police activity, a probe that fostered resentment among the troopers, Whitman said. Attorneys predicted courts would be overwhelmed with pleas to overturn drug convictions. "I hope more people come forward. If the New Jersey justice system has any moral strength and strength of character, it should be willing to reopen cases where the convictions aren't sound," attorney William Buckman said. Buckman led the legal challenge that ended in 1996 when a judge said troopers on the turnpike stopped black and Hispanic motorists disproportionately. Despite internal evidence to support that conclusion, the state continued to appeal the ruling until 1999. Included in the documents released Monday are many key reports state officials denied existed, Buckman said. Some of them were evidence he requested as early as 1990 for criminal trials. "Even when they attacked the court cases and disparaged us personally, they knew that it was true," Buckman said. The documents show no conspiracy to cover up racial profiling, Farmer maintains. Whitman said the focus should be on the lesson offered by the documents and not on finding a scapegoat in Verniero. "The important thing overall is to learn how it happened, how it was a gradual slide motivated by the best of intentions, drug interdiction," Whitman said. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom