Upton Sinclair once wrote "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his income depends on his not understanding it.

I thought of that saying last week when I saw that Bob Ehling of Sussex County was convicted of illegal hunting for shooting three bears on his property.

The Sparta resident was fined $4,332 after his conviction on three charges for hunting out of season and one charge of possessing a loaded hunting weapon within 450 feet of a residence.

That conviction came in municipal court. If you're ever sat through a session of municipal court in New Jersey, you quickly realize these courts exist to produce not justice but revenue. It's the judicial equivalent of the old TV show "Let's Make a Deal."

I saw it in action when I attended the first day of Ehling's trial back in October. He spent most of the afternoon waiting as various defendants made plea bargains with the prosecutor that would then be confirmed by the judge.

When it was Ehling's turn, he went out in the hall (or should I say the Monty Hall; see video below) and was offered a deal to plead guilty to just one of the charges and pay a small fine. One problem: He wasn't hunting. No one hunts in their underwear, which is what Ehling was wearing that morning when a 300-pound bear showed up at the sliding glass door of his balcony, a few feet from where his wife was making breakfast.

That meant he had to go to trial. But even though our constitution requires a trial by a jury of your peers, the state of New Jersey has decided you get a trial by a judge whose job may depend on generating revenue for the municipality run by the people who appointed him.

"In my experience the local township committee will hire the judge and hire the prosecutor who are sensitive to the wants and desires of local elected officials," said state Sen. Mike Doherty, a Republican from neighboring Warren County. Those wants include revenue flowing into the town coffers, he said.

Doherty, who is a lawyer, noted that the system is different in the Superior Courts, which are on the county level. Those judges are appointed by the governor and are insulated from repercussions for failing to produce revenue.

I then put in a call to a guy who used to be a Superior Court judge, Andrew Napolitano. Napolitano, who is now the Fox News legal analyst, was a judge in Bergen County in the 1980s.

"In Bergen we were required as Superior Court judges to sit one day a month as municipal court judges," he said. "We tried these very same cases with a lot more neutrality and fairness because we weren't subject to the local interests."

Trying cases in the local courts is tough, said Ehling's defense attorney, George Daggett, a 78-year-old attorney with much experience.

"I have tried murder cases and organized crime cases in the federal courts," Daggett said. "In one municipal court, I have tried 52 cases and I won one."

Napolitano called that "a Russian rate of conviction, not an American rate of conviction."

He said that in the 1980s Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Wilentz talked about the one-sided nature of the municipal courts but never did anything about it.

"He could have done it on his own by rewriting the court rules," he said. "But there's such a vested interest politically."

Along with the township officials, the police also get upset when the judge rules against them, Napolitano said.

Daggett recalled that when he first started practicing law the local judges weren't even required to be lawyers. One was the local mechanic.

But back then they mainly handed minor matters. Over the years the courts acquired more and more power, but the conflict of interest remained.

Daggett said he'll appeal this case to the court that should have heard it in the first place, the Superior Court. But as with similar cases I've covered, the defendant must first run up thousands of dollars in legal fees in municipal court before the case will reach a judge who does not have a financial interest in the outcome.

Doherty - who is supporting Donald Trump for president, by the way - pinned the blame for the Ehling case on Gov. Chris Christie. State wildlife officials - who also get a cut of the fines, by the way - should never have charged Ehling with hunting violations in the first place, he said.

"It's not as if the gentleman put on hunting gear, got in his pickup truck and went into the woods to shoot a bear out of season," Doherty said.

No, it's not. But a lot of people's incomes depend on pretending it is.

PLUS - HOW McGREEVEY MADE IT EVEN WORSE: As Napolitano noted, it's been common knowledge since the 1980s that this system is inherently corrupt. Subsequent governors did nothing about it, except for Jim McGreevey.

He made it even worse.

Instead of reforming the system to remove the conflicts of interest, McGreevey decided to cut himself in on some of the swag. In 2004, he bonded for $2.8 billion to balance his budget. He planned to pay for these bonds by raising the tax on cigarettes and also by imposing a $250 surcharge on "unsafe driving" guilty pleas in municipal courts.

These charges permit people to pay a larger fine but avoid getting points on their driving records. This was a clear violation of the state constitution's Debt Limitation Clause, which requires that all bonding go before the voters. Never mind though. Our state Supreme Court let him get away with it.

If you're keeping score at home, that's the same Supreme Court that permits all these municipal courts to continue in existence despite the way they're rigged against defendants.

Till this is reformed, the court should order that over the doors of every municipal courtroom be written the slogan "Abandon all hope ye who enter here."

Paul Mulshine may be reached at Pmulshine@starledger.com. Follow him on Twitter @Mulshine. Find The Star-Ledger on Facebook.