SUPPORTERS OF JUSTICE VERNIERO QUESTION THE CASE AGAINST HIM

TRENTON, April 13 -- The calls for Peter G. Verniero to resign from the New
Jersey Supreme Court have come from almost every quarter: Republicans in
the State Senate, Democrats in the State Senate, the acting governor, civil
rights groups, editorial writers.

But, as Assembly Speaker Jack Collins ponders an 11-page letter from the
Senate Judiciary Committee calling for impeachment proceedings, voices of
support for Justice Verniero are emerging and raising questions about the
hearings that have presented the case against him.

Two former State Supreme Court justices this week protested "a portrait of
Justice Verniero as the central villain in the racial profiling debate."
Several people who have spoken with the court's current members say the
justices are appalled by his treatment. Lawyers accustomed to defending
clients note that the Senate hearings were a political event, not a legal
proceeding.

A trial, they point out, with defense counsel and cross-examination, would
at least elicit responses to the charges that Justice Verniero ignored
racial profiling by the state police when he was the state's attorney
general and then gave deceptive testimony about it in his court
confirmation hearings. There are, his supporters say, at least two very
different versions of Mr. Verniero's treatment of racial profiling, each
leading to a different conclusion as to whether his testimony at his
confirmation hearings was honest, equivocal, slippery, mistaken or
purposefully false.

In the first scenario, Mr. Verniero shoved aside evidence given to him,
withheld documents sought by federal civil rights investigators and kept
news of the investigation carefully contained. He acknowledged
discrimination against minority motorists only when his court nomination
was in the balance, and excused himself by saying he had only recently seen
the damning evidence.

In the second, Mr. Verniero's biggest offenses were naivete and
inattention. He was assured that racial profiling was not a problem. His
predecessor, Deborah T. Poritz, now the State Supreme Court's chief
justice, said claims to the contrary were based on "junk science." He may
or may not have seen a few abbreviated sets of statistics that landed in
the vast bureaucracy of the attorney general's office. When the Justice
Department undertook an investigation, he defended the state's interest by
declining to surrender anything he was not legally obligated to produce.
The first version prevailed at the current hearings.

Mr. Verniero "perpetrated a huge injustice on our community," Senator Wayne
R. Bryant, a Democrat from Camden, said after testifying this week. "The
minority community won't feel vindicated until he is off the court."

And Justice Verniero has not received good reviews for his own 13 1/2- hour
defense. "I think he had every opportunity to explain himself; I don't have
any question about that," said Frank Askin, the director of the
constitutional litigation clinic at Rutgers Law School in Newark. "I think
it was a legitimate process."

But Justice Verniero's supporters say that if the accusations sound
persuasive, it is partly because the committee members and lawyers all took
prosecutorial roles.

"Nothing has been brought out from all the favorable evidence they had that
would have supported Verniero's version of the facts," said Alan L. Zegas,
a former president of the Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New
Jersey. "None was used except those portions that were bad for him. So he
was put in an unfair light, and I think that's wrong."

Robert B. Reed, a former member of the bar association committee that
screens judicial candidates, said, "I did not get the impression that the
conclusions resulted from any search for the truth." Mr. Reed, who was on
the committee when it reviewed Justice Verniero, added that recent news
coverage reflected "a bias against the justice which I thought bordered on
hysteria."

The Judiciary Committee investigation was undertaken to examine
discrimination against black and Hispanic motorists by the state police,
and much of the testimony concerned evidence that minority drivers were
stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike at rates far higher than that for
whites. The questioning focused on Mr. Verniero's treatment of that
evidence when he was attorney general from 1996 to 1999. Then, in the 14th
hour of Justice Verniero's testimony on March 28, the committee chairman,
Senator William L. Gormley, accused him of misrepresenting that record when
the committee considered his nomination in 1999. That charge became the
basis of the committee's call for Justice Verniero's resignation, which was
seconded by Acting Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco, and its letter this week
urging Mr. Collins to start impeachment proceedings. The letter contends
that Mr. Verniero gave false statements about the status of the Justice
Department's investigation and about when his department had begun
collecting data about traffic stops and searches. It also says he misled
the judiciary committee at his confirmation hearings when he responded to a
question of when he had become aware of that data and, in response to a
written request from minority legislators in March 1999, told them the
statistics were not readily available.

The senior Democrat on the committee, Senator John A. Lynch, said the
letter "sets forth the undisputed facts concerning Justice Verniero's
actions regarding racial profiling and his conduct during his confirmation
to the Supreme Court."

But Mr. Zegas said that Justice Verniero's general response — that the
evidence of racial profiling did not "crystallize in my mind" until 1998 —
was credible. "There's no reason to disbelieve that, given the testimony of
his immediate subordinates," Mr. Zegas said.

While current justices refuse to comment publicly, two former justices,
Marie L. Garibaldi and Daniel J. O'Hern, said in a statement that "we are
not judges of the Legislature or its proceedings, but we are concerned
about the public impression of the character and integrity of our friend."

Justice Verniero has turned aside pleas that he resign, and maintains that
he has answered every question truthfully. His lawyer, Robert A. Mintz, is
writing a response to the committee's letter that he plans to deliver to
Mr. Collins on Monday.

Mr. Collins, a Republican but not a friend of Mr. DiFrancesco's, responded
coolly and said he would announce a decision next week. He and the Assembly
are consumed by redistricting and, many legislators say, are not eager to
take up impeachment. Finally, the Assembly has only until May 15 to meet
the impeachment time limit.

Still, Justice Verniero will be judged again in 2006, when his initial term
expires and he must be reappointed and reconfirmed. So far, a majority of
the 25 Republican senators have called for his resignation. The 15
Democrats in the Senate opposed his nomination in 1999.