WARREN COUNTY — A year ago, Warren County officials staged a ribbon-cutting ceremony to unveil a $7.5 million courthouse renovation in Belvidere that included two new courtrooms.

Last month, one of those new courtrooms became notable for a different reason: A judge declared it "constitutionally defective" — apparently the only one in the state to have that distinction.

The problems in Courtroom 2 are a 6-inch-wide, wood-paneled support pillar that obstructs defendants’ views of the jury box, and the narrowness of the front area of the courtroom, which partially obstructs views of the witness stand from the defense table. Because the Sixth Amendment provides defendants with the right to confront witnesses against them, the obstructions affect their constitutional rights.

As a result of the ruling, jury trials have been barred from using the courtroom while the Warren public defender and prosecutor’s offices wage a court battle over its use. A Superior Court judge in New Brunswick is scheduled to hear the case today.

"This courtroom is just poorly conceived from a trial standpoint," Superior Court Judge Ann Bartlett, sitting in Belvidere, said during a hearing Feb. 6.

Bartlett continued to say at the hearing that the new courtroom looks "lovely" and that she was "sure it was economically built." She then deflected responsibility for the room’s design from judicial sources.

"The judges were not consulted when the courtroom was designed" and "the defense bar was not consulted in the final stages of design," Bartlett said.

In response, County Administrator Steve Marvin put the onus on state court officials.

"I’m not sure Judge Bartlett has any grasp of the project," Marvin said, adding that a group of "experts" appointed by the state court system designed the project and "signed off on every aspect of it."

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State court officials aren’t commenting, except for Robert Levine, the retired court official who managed the project. Levine said there should be nothing wrong with the courtroom — and if there is, then county freeholders should bear some blame.

The issue of the courtroom’s design arose during the trial of Kyle Frazier, 28, of Easton, Pa., who was facing three drug charges. Frazier’s public defender, John McGuigan, filed a motion that claimed Courtroom 2 violated his client’s "right to confrontation of witnesses and jury trial."

"That right is impaired or diminished if the defense counsel or defendant does not have a clear and unobstructed view of the testimony," he said.

McGuigan said attorneys and clients are restricted to a narrow, horizontal area at the front of the courtroom, causing the view of the witness stand from the defense table to be "partially obstructed" by the judge’s bench.

While defense counsel can see the faces of witnesses, they cannot tell if a witness is looking at a document, McGuigan said.

At one point during the hearing, Bartlett sat in the defendant’s chair while McGuigan sat in the witness box.

"I can see just Mr. McGuigan’s face and the top of his shoulder and the collar of his shirt," Bartlett said. "I cannot see his hands, and I cannot see his chin."

Bartlett then granted the motion and moved the trial to an older, more spacious courtroom in the 1826 courthouse, where the jury found Frazier guilty of all charges on Feb. 16.

The prosecutor’s office is contesting Bartlett’s ruling, saying the obstructions are not serious enough to warrant closing Courtroom 2 to trials. Assistant Prosecutor Dit Mosco added the ruling "jeopardizes three convictions obtained in the courtroom."

Mosco filed a motion to vacate Bartlett’s order with Superior Court Assignment Judge Yolanda Ciccone, who oversees the Somerset-Hunterdon-Warren vicinage. Ciccone ordered the case transferred to Middlesex County.

McGuigan and Tamara Kendig, a spokeswoman for the state’s judiciary, said they know of no previous cases in New Jersey in which defendants contended inadequate courtroom facilities violated their rights.

But the issue has been raised, if not recently, in other states.

In briefs filed for today’s hearing, the most recent case cited by both the public defender’s office and prosecutor’s office occurred in Sacramento, Calif., in 1981.

Mosco said in that case, and similar ones, the obstructions were "much more egregious" than in Warren. An appellate court ruled in the Sacramento case that the defendant’s rights were violated because he and the witness "could not see each other at all," Mosco pointed out. The witness was a 5-year-old girl who was the alleged victim of a sexual assault.

In Warren County, Freeholder Director Everett Chamberlain emphasized that the courthouse renovation project was designed by the state court system and the county paid for it.

"This is the way they wanted it. We facilitated it," he said. "The visual obstruction was brought up by our architect at one of the meetings and the court personnel said it’s not a problem.

"I’m very disgusted, very upset, furious at the incompetence of the court people," Chamberlain added. He said Ciccone, Levine and vicinage court administrator Gene Farkas, all "signed off" on the design for the courtrooms.

Chamberlain and the two other Warren freeholders vowed that if any more money must be spent to upgrade Courtroom 2, it will come from the state, which runs the court system, and not from the county, which merely operates the facilities.

Ciccone and Farkas both declined to comment. Levine, who retired at the end of 2010, said he hadn’t heard about the judge’s ruling, but he was familiar with the issues involved.

"Our calculations were these lines of sight were adequate. They were worked out very carefully," he said.

"There was a pillar, but it didn’t block anything critical," Levine added.

Bonita Bourke, president of the Warren County Bar Association, said the pillar clearly obstructs the defendant’s view. She said it’s crucial for defense lawyers to see the expressions on jurors’ faces, because "trials move very quickly. They can turn on a dime."

She said the bar association was not consulted on the design of the new courthouse, but stands ready to assist court and county officials in altering the arrangement of Courtroom 2.

"We can all work on this together and no one needs to be pointing fingers," Bourke said.