The Muddled Profiling Case

It is time for federal prosecutors to step in and take control of the New Jersey case in which two state police officers shot at four unarmed black and Hispanic men on the New Jersey Turnpike. The Justice Department announced yesterday that it is beginning an investigation. It should proceed quickly because the New Jersey attorney general's office is simply too politically tainted to provide justice for either the officers or the victims.

The case drew national attention to New Jersey's racial profiling, the practice of singling out minority motorists for drug searches and traffic stops based on their race and ethnicity. In the turnpike incident, four men traveling in a van were pulled over for a traffic stop by the troopers. Why the officers started shooting remains in dispute. In any case, three of the van's four occupants were wounded. Bullets remain lodged in the bodies of two of the victims.

A state grand jury indicted the two troopers, James Kenna and John Hogan, on charges of attempted murder and aggravated assault. But on Tuesday, Judge Andrew Smithson of State Superior Court threw out all the charges on grounds that state prosecutors had so prejudiced the grand jury as to render the indictment invalid. Gov. Christine Todd Whitman has said the state attorney general's office will appeal the decision. Even if the state loses the appeal, it can seek a new indictment from a new grand jury. But it seems unlikely that the shattered trust of minority communities can be mended by seeking a new indictment.

The state attorney general's office has a deeply troubling record on the issue of racial profiling. For years, the former attorney general, Peter Verniero, dismissed complaints and failed to address the problem even though his office had oversight responsibility for the state police. Internal documents now show that police commanders had evidence of racial profiling from 1996 and 1997, but that they tried to withhold some of the information from federal investigators. One memo indicates that Mr. Verniero was present at a meeting when such information was discussed.

However, when it came time to investigate the turnpike shooting, Mr. Verniero seemed to feel a need to take a tougher stand against racial profiling, perhaps because he was seeking appointment to the New Jersey Supreme Court. During the battle over his confirmation, the special deputy prosecutor he appointed announced a separate indictment of the two troopers on charges of falsifying official records. Mr. Verniero was subsequently confirmed by the State Senate to the court in May 1999.

The timing infuriated Judge Smithson, who said that a second indictment should not have been made public while the first grand jury was still working on the shooting case. He also criticized the prosecution's failure to give the grand jury complete instructions on the law regarding the use of deadly force by police officers. Judge Smithson noted "the powerful and intimidating forces driving the decisionmaking" of the attorney general's office, and called the timing "more a matter of political expediency" than of concern for the rights of the two defendants.

This questionable history makes it clear that the attorney general's office has no credibility on this case. The people of New Jersey deserve to have this critical case brought to trial in a just manner. At this stage, federal prosecutors may be best able to deliver that result.

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