ATTORNEY GENERAL WAS ALERTED TO PROFILING, PREDECESSOR SAYS

TRENTON, March 21 - The chief justice of New Jersey's Supreme Court,
Deborah T. Poritz, told investigators that she had "flagged" racial
profiling as an issue for Peter G. Verniero to watch as he prepared to
succeed her as state attorney general in 1996, according to interview notes
released today by the State Senate Judiciary Committee.

The sketchy notes, posted on the committee's Web site, say that Judge
Poritz told committee investigators that state police officials had
adamantly denied that troopers were practicing racial profiling, though
they acknowledged that better records of traffic stops were needed.

The chief justice's indication that Mr. Verniero, who now serves alongside
her on the Supreme Court, had been told about racial profiling upon taking
office, three years before he finally acknowledged its existence, is likely
to add to the fever of speculation surrounding his handling of the issue as
he prepares to testify before the Senate committee on Wednesday. The
committee is investigating the state's response to allegations of racial
profiling that began surfacing in 1996.

Mr. Verniero's critics say that he hid his awareness of racial profiling by
the state police under his command until he was nominated for the Supreme
Court in 1999, three years after the chief justice says that she briefed
him. But Mr. Verniero has never denied knowing of the allegations of racial
profiling, and has instead insisted that proof of its existence
"crystallized" in his mind only after the April 1998 wounding of three
black and Hispanic men by state troopers on the New Jersey Turnpike
prompted his office to examine turnpike stops, searches and arrests.

According to the interview notes taken by Michael Chertoff, the committee's
special counsel, Judge Poritz told investigators that racial profiling "was
an issue she flagged" for Mr. Verniero in 1996, after a state court threw
out the evidence seized in several South Jersey traffic stops and arrests
on grounds that the stops were racially tainted and therefore illegal.

The notes make plain that Judge Poritz, who was attorney general from 1994
to 1996, was concerned, as Mr. Verniero says he later was, that the
statistics cited in the decision as proof of profiling were unreliable.

The notes indicate that the chief justice said she was not aware of the
issue until that ruling, in the so-called Soto case.

"No one told her racial profiling was a real issue," Mr. Chertoff's notes
read. "Told absolutely and adamantly (after Soto) by NJSP that they did not
profile." NJSP stands for the New Jersey State Police.

She also said, according to the notes, that her discussion with Mr.
Verniero focused in large part on the decision to appeal the Soto ruling.

"Discussion with Verniero" the notes read. "Generally briefed him about
Soto. Told him she made the decision to take the appeal and why. Took
appeal because concerned about some of legal rulings, adequacy of
statistical analysis by Public Defender, NJSP adamantly denied racial
profiling, needed better records and understanding of what was going on."

But the Soto case was only one of several issues that Mr. Verniero and his
predecessor found time to discuss during his transition, and while she said
that she told Mr. Verniero of the case and its implications for the state
police, she did not recall "making a specific list of `hot issues.' "

Calls to Judge Poritz's court office and her spokeswoman were not answered
tonight. Mr. Chertoff would not comment on the notes.

The notes are posted at http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/nj.

Unlike the 29 other witnesses interviewed by the Senate committee so far,
Judge Poritz was not deposed under oath.

In the notes, the chief justice appears to say that she decided to appeal
the Soto decision even though she was unsure of the arrest statistics on
which it rested. The state dropped the Soto appeal in 1999, and has since
thrown out many other criminal cases on grounds that they, too, were tainted.

The Soto decision, in March 1996, produced "lots of discussion over several
days," and "trusted staff people," the notes say, were concerned about the
precedent it set of throwing out evidence based on racial statistics. The
notes say Ms. Poritz, then attorney general, "took statistics home and
sought advice from mathematicians about statistical modeling."

The tone of the interview notes suggests that she flew into a whirl of
activity over racial profiling as soon as the Soto case disclosed that
there was a problem. But testimony by Mr. Verniero's subordinates over the
last two days has established that his senior aides were studiously
avoiding looking at the data on racial profiling that the police had begun
compiling and that his subordinates were discouraged from releasing
information too easily.