Just days after urging municipal prosecutors to seek a temporary adjournment of marijuana-related prosecutions, Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal on Friday convened a working group of prosecutors and police as well as civil rights organizations and defense attorneys.
In a letter issued earlier this week asking prosecutors to adjourn cases until Sept. 4 or later, Grewal said his office would issue a directive sometime next month that would clarify the appropriate use of prosecutorial discretion in marijuana-related cases in municipal courts.
“This working group will review how the municipal prosecutors under my supervision can contribute responsibly to the progressive solutions we are seeking,” said Grewal in an statement emailed to media on Friday evening.
Indeed, several of the working group’s members favor legalization of cannabis, according to one municipal prosecutor who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Among those favoring legalization are NJ ACLU executive director Amol Sinha, Jersey City prosecutor Jake Hudunut, and Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora, who until this year was a Democratic architect of the legalization effort in the Assembly.
“I’m an urban mayor and former municipal prosecutor who’s seen first-hand marijuana enforcement,” Gusciora told NJ Advance Media on Friday. “Even police think they have better things to do than marijuana. It takes thousands of dollars to prosecute a single joint, and it’s a waste of money.”
But not everyone serving on the Attorney General’s working group are so sure.
“I think its dangerous when you have individual mayors making their own legal decisions,” said Patrick Colligan, president of the 32,000 member New Jersey State Policemen’s Benevolent Association.
“But we’re open minded and glad to be included in the decision making process, because many of our members are intimately affected by this.”
The full membership of the working group follows:
- Veronica Allende, director of the division of criminal justice within the attorney general’s department of law and public safety, will chair the working group.
- Matthew Berns, counsel to the attorney general
- Richard T. Burke, Warren County Prosecutor;
- Pat Colligan, president of the New Jersey State Policemen’s Benevolent Association
- Deputy Attorney General Claudia DeMitro
- Annette DePalma, president of the New Jersey State Municipal Prosecutors’ Association
- Stephan Finkel, director of legislative affairs for the Department of Law and Public Safety
- Charles Fiore, Gloucester County Prosecutor
- Mayor W. Reed Gusciora of Trenton
- Jake Hudnut, Jersey City’s chief municipal prosecutor
- Van Lane, deputy public defender of Monmouth County
- Deputy Attorney General Robyn B. Mitchell
- Jiles H. Ship, New Jersey police training commissioner
- Ahmad Rasool, Municipal Prosecutor for the City of Newark
- Amol Sinha, Executive Director of the ACLU of New Jersey
- Richard T. Smith, President of the New Jersey State Conference of the NAACP
- Steven A. Somogyi, Assistant Director of the New Jersey Judiciary
- Sherry Stembridge, Assistant Essex County Prosecutor
- Esther Suarez, Hudson County Prosecutor
- John Zebrowski, Chief of Police, Sayreville.
Jersey City’s prosector, Jake Hudnut, said he was hopeful that the group would bring both clarity and flexibility to the issue.
“Municipal prosecutors must be able to thoughtfully see that justice is done,” said Hudnut. “I look forward to advocating for guidelines that give us the discretion and integrity we need to do that in our courts.”
The working group will issue its decision sometime in August, Grewal said.
Credit: www.nj.com
