RACE-PROFILE TACTICS MAY AFFECT DRUG CASES

'The Constitutional Violations Are So Egregious, And They've Been Sitting
On These Documents For Years.'

- -- Kevin Walker, Public Defender

TRENTON, N.J. -- After admitting that 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 black
and Hispanic state troopers who allege that they were forced to practice
racial profiling.

Attorney General John Farmer 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."

On Monday, Farmer released more than 90,000 pages of documents showing that
New Jersey State Police stopped overwhelmingly disproportionate numbers of
minorities in searches for drugs.

New Jersey's top-ranked law enforcement officials had known that since at
least 1989 but did not admit that racial profiling was widespread until an
April 1999 report.

Attorneys for the motorists and the troopers returned to a state reading
room Tuesday to resume searching 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 that 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
until 1999.

Included in the documents released Monday are many key reports that state
officials denied existed, Buckman said.