RACIAL PROFILING MAY TAINT N.J. DRUG CASES

TRENTON, N.J.--After admitting the state's war on drugs unfairly victimized
minority drivers, New Jersey's attorney general might 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
African-American and Hispanic state troopers who allege they were forced to
practice racial profiling.

Attorney General John J. Farmer Jr. said his office would review each
pending criminal case in which bias allegedly tainted drug seizures.
Criminal charges could be dropped, he said.

Civil lawsuits also will be examined with an eye toward settlement.

"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."

Farmer on Monday released about 100,000 pages of documents showing that
state troopers stopped overwhelmingly disproportionate numbers of minorities
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.

Attorneys for the drivers and the troopers returned to a state reading room
Tuesday to resume searching the documents.

"The constitutional violations are so egregious, and they've been sitting on
these documents for years," public defender Kevin Walker said Tuesday.

Walker, who represents several defendants stopped on the New Jersey
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.

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 a legal challenge that ended in 1996 when a judge said troopers
on the turnpike targeted minorities more than whites. 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 were evidence he requested as
early as 1990 for criminal trials.

Controversy over possible racial profiling--derided in the minority
community as DWB or "driving while black"--was heightened in 1998 when two
troopers shot and wounded three minority men during a traffic stop.

In early 1999, Gov. Christie Whitman fired the state police superintendent
after he said minorities were responsible for most of the state's cocaine
and marijuana traffic.

A state judge dismissed charges against the troopers involved in the
shooting, accusing prosecutors of misconduct and a former state attorney
general of bowing to political pressure.

This month, federal prosecutors agreed to pursue possible federal charges in
the case.