'PROFILING' COULD NULLIFY N.J. DRUG CASES

Hundreds Claim They Were Targeted By Race; Criminal Charges Could Be Dropped

TRENTON, N.J. -- After admitting 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 Latino state troopers who allege they were forced to practice racial
profiling.

Attorney General John J. Farmer Jr. 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."

Monday, Farmer released nearly 100,000 pages of documents showing that
state troopers stopped overwhelmingly disproportionate numbers of
minorities 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.

Attorneys for the motorists and the troopers returned to a state reading
room Tuesday to resume searching the 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 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 members of minority groups more than whites.
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.