2 STATE TROOPERS INDICTED IN SHOOTING ON N.J. TURNPIKE

Two state troopers were indicted on attempted murder charges
Tuesday for shooting three black and Hispanic men on the New Jersey
Turnpike -- one of several cases that have stirred a nationwide debate
over racial profiling by police.

John Hogan, 29, and James Kenna, 28, could get up to 40 years in
prison if convicted on the state charges.

The troopers are accused of firing 11 shots into a van containing four
young men on their way to a basketball tryout at N.C. Central
University in Durham in 1998. Two black men and a Hispanic man were
wounded, and they have filed civil rights and injury lawsuits against
the troopers and the state.

Hogan and Kenna, who are white, have said they stopped the van because
the driver was speeding and opened fire because it appeared the van
was backing up to hit them.

Hogan's lawyer, Robert Galantucci, said Hogan was struck by the van on
a dark stretch of highway and had only seconds to respond. He called
the indictment "politically motivated."

The shooting triggered protests and internal investigations that
embroiled the New Jersey State Police in the controversy over the
practice of stopping motorists on the basis of race.

Earlier this year, Gov. Christie Whitman fired the State Police
superintendent after he said minorities were responsible for most of
the state's cocaine and marijuana traffic.

In June, President Clinton issued an executive order calling on
federal law enforcement agencies to collect race and gender data in
all stops and arrests. Police in several places, including North
Carolina, Houston, San Diego and San Jose, Calif., have taken similar
measures.

In April, Hogan and Kenna were indicted on charges of falsifying
traffic-stop reports to conceal the fact they were stopping a lot of
black drivers.