COURT LETS INMATES REOPEN DRUG CASES TO PLEAD RACIAL PROFILING

Opening courtroom doors ever wider to victims of racial profiling, a state
appeals court yesterday ruled that prisoners serving time for drug offenses
may seek to reopen their cases if they had raised the issue of racial
profiling at trial.

The unanimous ruling is the latest legal consequence of the state's
admission last year that state troopers have been engaging in racial
profiling on state highways for years. Experts said it could add untold
numbers of new cases to the state's growing list of legal troubles arising
from racial profiling.

The state already is reviewing about 150 cases of motorists who say they
were stopped by troopers based on nothing more than the color of their
skin. But none of those cases involved defendants already convicted,
according to defense attorneys and Attorney General John Farmer Jr.

"I think it (yesterday's ruling) is a big blow to the state," said Kevin
Walker, an assistant public defender. "They wanted to limit the pool of
potential defendants who can assert racial profiling. This expands that
pool. In appropriate circumstances, it can be raised even after trial.
That's a blow to the state."

Rejecting arguments advanced by prosecutors, a three-judge panel of the
Appellate Division of Superior Court cleared the way for defendants in
three separate cases to seek discovery and possibly new trials based on the
April 20, 1999, "Interim Report of the State Police Review Team Regarding
Allegations of Racial Profiling." In that report, the state Attorney
General's Office conceded that racial profiling was "real, not imagined."

The court said defendants who have raised the issue in prior proceedings
could return to court to seek a new trial based on "newly discovered
evidence" to support their previously rejected claim of racial profiling.
The court said the report established a "basis for a claim of selective
enforcement."

The decision requires prisoners to take action on their own. The Public
Defender's Office cannot go through its files and determine which prisoners
might be able to bring a case, Walker said. It is up to inmates who believe
they were victims of racial profiling to come forward first, he said. Only
at that point can a judge assign a public defender to file a motion on
behalf of a defendant.

Walker said his client, Louis W. Williamson, 29, of North Carolina, filed a
motion on his own seeking to reopen his case based on the state report
admitting racial profiling.

Farmer said the rulings are not surprising.

Since he decided to release some 90,000 pages of documents revealing that
top state officials failed to respond to allegations of racial profiling
for nearly two decades, Farmer said he also has considered dropping
criminal cases in which there are allegations that troopers singled out
drivers based on race. However, he said he will review cases on an
individual basis.

"Some people think the documents are an excuse to throw them out," said
Farmer. "These are all cases where contraband was found, people who were
breaking the law. I think it is irresponsible to use the documents as an
excuse to throw all these things out."

Chatham defense attorney Alan Zegas, a leading expert in criminal law, said
the rulings are "extremely unusual." Courts rarely issue rulings that could
have a broad effect on inmates, he said. But Zegas viewed the decisions as
a bold move to begin to remedy what he suggested was a state-sponsored
injustice.

"In this country, we don't institute criminal action solely because of the
color of a person's skin," said Zegas. "What the courts have done in these
three opinions today is acknowledge that fundamental principle of our
Constitution."

In the three cases decided yesterday, four inmates allege they were stopped
based on their race. On March 28, 1996, Williamson was traveling on the New
Jersey Turnpike in a rented van with two other African-American men when
troopers pulled them over in the Burlington County area.

While questioning Williamson, they noticed a bulge in the crotch area of
his pants, conducted a pat-down search and discovered cocaine. He was
convicted in February 1998 of possession of cocaine with intent to
distribute and sentenced to 15 years in prison with a five-year period of
parole ineligibility.

Thomas Ross, 57, was traveling with two other African-American men in a
green BMW on Route 80 West in Netcong en route to Virginia when they were
stopped by a trooper for failing to keep right.

The trooper did a pat-down search of Ross and found E-ZWider rolling
papers. A subsequent search of the car revealed two marijuana roaches, 5.88
grams of marijuana and a brown bag containing 5.06 ounces of cocaine. Ross
was sentenced to 15 years in prison with a five-year period of parole
ineligibility.

In the third case, Ruben Velez and Alexander Chapman were stopped in Bergen
County. They said they were subjected to a search after a trooper
discovered that Velez's brothers were from Colombia.