N.J. COULD DROP MANY DRUG CASES: RACE PROFILING DISCLOSURES TRIGGER REVIEW

TRENTON -- After admitting that the state's war on drugs unfairly
victimized minority drivers, New Jersey's attorney general may 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 they were forced to practice racial
profiling.

Attorneys for the motorists and the troopers returned to a state reading
room yesterday to resume searching nearly 100,000 pages of records, many
marked confidential and never before made public. Attorney General John J.
Farmer Jr. made the documents public Monday.

Collected in 185 binders now on public display, the records show troopers
systematically selected minority drivers 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.

That report came a year after two troopers fired 11 shots at a van they had
stopped for speeding on the New Jersey Turnpike. Three of the four men
inside, all minorities, were wounded.

Criminal charges against the two troopers were dismissed by a judge, but
the state is appealing that ruling.

"The constitutional violations are so egregious and they've been sitting on
these documents for years," Public Defender Kevin Walker said yesterday.
Walker, who represents several defendants stopped on the 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.

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

The civil lawsuits also will be examined with an eye toward settlements.

"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."

In a telephone interview yesterday from California, Gov. Whitman praised
Farmer for his decision to release the paperwork.

Whitman also had praise for his predecessor, Peter G. Verniero. Some have
suggested Verniero, who is now a justice of the state Supreme Court, failed
to deal with racial profiling and attempted to thwart an investigation by
the U.S. Justice Department.

"He's the one who started the process of really going after it," Whitman
said of Verniero.

Verniero's department conducted an unprecedented investigation into State
Police activity, a probe that fostered resentment among the troopers,
Whitman 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 the legal challenge that ended in 1996 when a judge said
troopers on the turnpike stopped black and Hispanic motorists
disproportionately. 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 of them were evidence he
requested as early as 1990 for criminal trials.

"Even when they attacked the court cases and disparaged us personally, they
knew that it was true," Buckman said.

The documents show no conspiracy to cover up racial profiling, Farmer
maintains.

Whitman said the focus should be on the lesson offered by the documents and
not on finding a scapegoat in Verniero.

"The important thing overall is to learn how it happened, how it was a
gradual slide motivated by the best of intentions, drug interdiction,"
Whitman said.