By Thomas Zambito and James Queally/The Star-Ledger

NEWARK — In the months before he was accused of acting as the getaway driver in last week's deadly carjacking at the Short Hills mall, Basim Henry proved a challenge to federal probation officers as they tried to get him to comply with the terms of his release from prison, court records show.

On Feb. 14, 2013, during a traffic stop by Union Township police, Henry was caught driving with a convicted felon in the car, a violation of his supervised release following a seven-year prison stretch for a 2003 bank robbery in Union that netted $48,000, the records show.

Henry, 32, was ordered into a community corrections center or halfway house for two months, probation records show. He was released on April 29, 2013 with a federal probation officer calling him “a program failure,” the records show.

As a result, in mid-May, Henry had a location monitoring device attached to his ankle that would track his every move for three months, records show. During that time he was ordered confined to his home, and allowed to leave only for work, religious services or to seek medical care.

He was arrested over the weekend by federal marshals in Easton, Pa., where authorities say he fled in the days after Hoboken lawyer Dustin Friedland, 30, was fatally shot in a

Short Hills mall parking lot during a holiday season shopping trip.

Henry was charged with violating the terms of his probation, which prohibited him from leaving New Jersey without the consent of probation officers.

Basim Henry, 32, is a suspect in the fatal shooting of Dustin Friedland at the Short Hills mall.

But today, a federal judge took the unusual step of agreeing to dismiss the probation violation so state prosecutors can pursue murder and related charges against Henry in the fatal shooting of Friedland.

Henry became the first of the four defendants accused of conspiring in Friedland’s slaying to appear in court. He was brought into U.S. District Judge Katharine Hayden’s Newark courtroom in an orange Essex County jail jumpsuit, his hands and feet shackled.

Co-defendants Karif Ford, 31; Hanif Thompson, 29; and Kevin Roberts, 35, will be arraigned on Jan. 8, 2014 in state Superior Court in Newark, acting Essex County

Prosecutor Carolyn Murray said today.

They are each being held in lieu of bonds of $2 million apiece.

During his stay at a federal prison in Pollock, La., Henry flooded the federal courts with lawsuits and legal challenges to his sentence, earning a reputation as being something of a handful.

The attorney who represented Henry in 2006 when he pleaded guilty to the bank robbery charge, said he wouldn’t do it again.

"I'm not representing him," said John Murphy, a Staten Island attorney. "I'm not doing it."

"Difficult?," Murphy added. "You know the old adage. If you can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything at all."

Henry filed a federal civil rights lawsuit seeking some $20 million for what he claimed was an illegal search of his residence by federal agents and Newark police officers following the Nov. 26, 2003 robbery of the Union Center Bank.

Henry claimed an officer did not get his signature on a consent to search his Lyons Avenue apartment in Newark, where officers found him hiding in a cabinet beneath the sink, according to court papers.

The search turned up a black ski mask on a nightstand as well as a black ski cap and shotgun ammunition, according to a federal complaint.

Henry pleaded guilty to robbing two bank employees as they loaded money into a drive-up ATM. Federal agents said he had stuck a gun to the head of one of the employees, while an accomplice sprayed Mace in the face of the other.

Henry adopted a lawyerly tone in his legal findings, referring to himself as “the plaintiff” and citing federal appeals court rulings to bolster his claims.

“There exist no written consent form bearing Plaintiffs signature prior to the search of the residence, which if obtained, would have given the authorities authorization to conduct a lawful search of the residence,” Henry wrote in February 2010.

U.S. District Judge Faith Hochberg dismissed the complaint a few months later, according to court records.

Henry did, however, prove effective as a jailhouse lawyer, successfully convincing U.S. District Judge Katharine Hayden in January 2012 to reduce the 95-month sentence she

gave him to 85 months.

Hayden’s ruling called the reduction “a correction” to the sentence she handed down, but did not elaborate.

A complaint released by federal prosecutors today detailed Henry’s alleged role in Friedland’s killing.

Among them:

• A surveillance video from the crime scene showed a vehicle registered to Henry’s mother was used by the carjackers to arrive at the scene, and that Henry drove the getaway vehicle from the scene.

• A “co-conspirator” of Henry’s “confirmed his role in the carjacking.”

• Shortly after Friedland was killed, GPS information tracked Henry’s cell phone to a hotel in Easton, Pa.

RELATED COVERAGE

• Short Hills mall shooting update: 4 men arrested, identified in connection with deadly carjacking



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