Kala Kachmar

@NewsQuip

As part of a follow-up to this series, the Asbury Park Press is looking for individuals who have had bad experiences with the municipal court system in New Jersey.

Somewhere in between burying her mother and taking care of her sick father in Maryland, Neptune resident Karen Marsh forgot to renew the licenses for her two rescue poodles.

Instead of paying the $17-per-dog renewal fee, she was compelled to spend a March day in municipal court and then pay $122 in fines and fees. The total would have been $178, but the judge suspended one of the fines in exchange for a guilty plea.

Marsh became prey to a system that increasingly treats hundreds of thousands of residents each year as human ATMs.

Many cash-strapped municipalities have turned to the law for new revenue, especially in small shore towns where municipal court revenues have nearly doubled in the last five years, an Asbury Park Press investigation found.

Towns have the power to pass new rules or increase fines on old ones. And just like the singular judge-jury-and-jailer of the old Western days, a town first enforces the higher fines through its police force, then sends the defendant to its local court — which is headed by a judge appointed by the town leaders who started the revenue quest in the first place.

While municipal judges are sworn to follow the rule of law and judicial ethics, the pressure to bring in the money is potent in New Jersey, lawyers and former judges told the Press. In Eatontown, email records between town officials showed that increasing revenue generation by the local court was the main reason the council replaced the municipal judge in 2013.

Other findings by the Press showed:

Municipal courts across Monmouth and Ocean counties raked in $26.2 million in 2015 — up $3.2 million, or 14 percent, from in 2010.

Of the 37 municipal courts that showed an increase in revenue, from 2010 through 2015, the average hike was 39 percent. One small town, Loch Arbor, saw an 117-percent boost in revenue.

Seven towns relied on municipal court revenue to support more than 5 percent of their municipal budgets last year. They were: Lake Como (9.4 percent); Englishtown (9.3 percent); Belmar (6.8 percent); Point Pleasant Beach (6.5 percent); Allentown (5.2 percent); and Bradley Beach and Neptune (both 5.1 percent).

The number of traffic and parking tickets issued increased in 27 Monmouth County and 16 Ocean County towns during the 2009/2010 court year through 2015/2016 court year. Tickets doubled in Hazlet, Keyport, Union Beach, Loch Arbor and Manalapan. Parking and traffic citations account for the bulk of municipal court cases. There are 86 towns in both counties.

Being a municipal court judge can be a lucrative practice. While most towns hire part-time judges and pay $20,000 to $60,000 a year, there have been several judges paid a total of more than $150,000 a year because they can cobble together multiple judgeships. Damian G. Murray, a longtime municipal court judge in seven Ocean County towns, was paid $281,000 last year, according to public records.

With so many towns relying on cash from courts to fund parts of their budgets, several former municipal court judges, legal experts and lawyers argue that the independence of New Jersey's municipal courts are in jeopardy.

"The tension is very real because you're straddling the line of being part of the judiciary and being an employee of the town," said Esther Canty-Barnes, a former municipal judge in Irvington who's now a professor at Rutgers School of Law in Newark.

Canty-Barnes said she decided not to seek re-appointed after four years in Irvington because the job was too political.

“The manner in which cases are disposed of can have a significant impact on a municipality’s budget and financial strength,” said Barbara Unger, an attorney and chair of the New Jersey State Bar Association’s subcommittee that’s studying the topic of demands on local courts. “We know there’s pressure on judges.”

At one point during Canty-Barnes' tenure, the township council passed a resolution to pay back a business owner the fine the judge had imposed for violating an ordinance. She had to tell the presiding judge at the county level, who then sent a letter to the township attorney letting them know the resolution was improper and overstepped the bounds of separation of power.

"I became the judge who wasn't playing the game," she said.

New Jersey is one of a handful states that gives the power to appoint municipal judges to localities, although when compared to the number of smaller states that elect local judges, it's an even split, said Bill Raftery, a senior analyst with the National Center for State Courts.

The idea that locally appointed judges are pressured to make money has been a hot topic for decades, he said. Some states have tried to curb pressures by enacting legislation that insulates judges from politics.

"The internalized pressure of selection or reappointment is officially or unofficial contingent on the ability to generate revenue," Raftery said. "It's an issue in some places."

'Nickel and dime'

Nearly 4.6 million cases — equal to two-thirds of the state's adult population — moved through the state's 507 municipal courts in 2015. Most of the cases — about 75 percent — are resolved through guilty pleas that are usually enticed with offers of reduced fines and lesser penalties.

Municipalities keep 100 percent of the revenue from ordinance violations but have to split revenue with the county for traffic violations.

A review of court records showed that leaving court without a fine is rare. Just 2 percent of defendants choose to go to trial, and of those, 16 percent won their cases. A defendant accused of murder has a better chance of acquittal. Thirty percent of those accused of intentional homicide walk out of court free, according to the national Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Michael Speck, a Freehold lawyer who has practiced in more than 350 of the state's municipal courts, said he found that it's tough for anyone to get a fair shake in New Jersey's municipal courts because revenue pressures can impact a judge's decision.

"Judges need to be free to decide their cases based on the law and the facts only," former Judge Paul Catanese, who was a judge for 20 years in South Brunswick, Lawrence and Hamilton townships. "They shouldn't be influenced directly or indirectly by the executive or legislative branch. I'm talking about police departments and governing bodies."

For Neptune homeowner Marsh, her payment to Neptune's municipal court was a tiny portion of the $800,000 in revenue Neptune's municipal court took in last year. That money offsets what otherwise might have been piled on to property taxes for local residents to pay.

When Marsh got the notice to appear in court, she went to township hall to pay the dog licenses — where they told her she had to go to municipal court even though her licenses were now up to date. She walked over to the municipal court to asked if she could get the case thrown out since the tags were up to date. The staff told her it would be up to the judge.

She wrote a note asking the judge to dismiss the case, but received a phone call later that day saying she had to appear in court to tell the judge why she shouldn't have to pay the fines. In exchange for a guilty plea, the judge dismissed one of her two $56 fines, but still made her pay one fine and court costs, for a total of $122.

Marsh, who works as an administrative assistant in Manhattan, said in her experience in states like New York and Maryland, judges don't clog up court time with minor violations.

"I had to take off work twice — two full days — to handle the dog licenses," Marsh said. "Yeah, ($122) is an inconvenience, but that's not the point. They're nickel-and-diming and chasing down good citizens."

Municipal control

But those nickels and dimes add up to millions of dollars every year in fines, court costs and surcharges. In 2015, Monmouth and Ocean county towns collected $26.2 million in municipal court revenue — excluding the millions of dollars in fines, fees and surcharges that went to county and state governments who can share the bounty, depending on the type of violation.

As any motorist knows, traffic tickets in New Jersey are a part of life.

Court records showed that moving violations and parking citations issued in Monmouth and Ocean counties have increased by about 11 percent overall from 2009/10 through 2015/16. The number of traffic tickets written in Hazlet, Keyport and Matawan — which share a municipal court — quadrupled during that time period to 209 percent. Forty-one Monmouth and Ocean towns saw a 5 percent increase; 24 towns had an increase of 30 percent or more.

Although most maximum penalties are governed by state statute, the amount imposed on an individual is typically up to the judge. When it comes to ordinances, though, governing bodies of towns have the ability to set their own minimums, maximums and mandatory fines. And there's no shortage of that action.

In November, Howell decided to change the penalty for single- or multi-family landlords who fail to register rental units annually from "up to $2,000" to a mandatory $1,000 for the first offense and a mandatory $2,000 for the second offense.

McKenna Torcivia, Howell's township attorney, said to council members the fines being imposed by the judge weren't "as steep" as they'd like to see.

In June, Asbury Park Police Chief Anthony Salerno told members of the city's Chamber of Commerce that he was working with the city's municipal judge, Daniel DiBenedetto, to increase fines and penalties for those who come before the law as a way to deter late-night drunken behavior downtown.

City Manager Michael Capabianco said the city is working on reviewing all the city's fines and fees.

In a May 2015 report from the New Jersey Bar Association on judicial independence, a panel of legal professional pointed out the need to study pressure on municipal judges to generate money for towns. Guilty findings — and the imposition of fines — could serve to assure a continuation of a municipal judge’s position, the report said.

Municipal judges have the power to accept or decline a plea, determine the outcome of a trial and impose sentences and fines.

Catanese, who now has a private law practice and was the presiding municipal court judge in Mercer County overseeing other judges and the support staff in those courts, recalled the pressures.

Although the judge said he never "succumbed" to thoughts about deciding a case a certain way to help his reappointment chances, it was always in the back of his mind.

Some of the towns Catanese worked for looked at the court revenue before determining whether he'd be reappointed, he said. While working in Lawrence Township, he was required to give a budget presentation about the state of revenue and spending within the court system.

Catanese recalled that certain cases had the "attention" of the municipality. He said a "not guilty" finding could be viewed as a personal affront to an officer, and a judge could find himself being disparaged by police and town employees.

"And the judges really shouldn't have to worry about that," he said. "They should be worrying about doing what is right, as we talk about individual justice in individual cases."

Making millions

Shore towns with small populations, but big summertime crowds, tended to have the highest increases in traffic tickets and court revenue, the Press found in its review of court data.

Asbury Park, for example, earned the most municipal court revenue of all Monmouth and Ocean towns in 2015: $1.4 million. From 2010 to 2015, revenue increased nearly 40 percent. That is about 3.2 percent of the city's $42.7 million budget.

It costs Asbury Park nearly $400,000 to operate its court, leaving it with a $1 million revenue windfall — enough to fund half of the city's general government salaries, the Press found.

Top revenue generators in 2015:

Asbury Park: $1.4 million Freehold Township: $1.1 million Belmar: $1 million Toms River: $949,563 Point Pleasant Beach: $929,669

Towns with the highest court revenue hikes from 2010 to 2015:

Loch Arbor made $43,338 in 2015 (117 percent increase) Sea Girt made $143,061 in 2015 (98.5 percent increase) Oceanport made $177,625 in 2015 (91 percent increase) Long Beach Township made $154,434 in 2015 (73 percent increase) Little Silver made $125,017 in 2015 (67 percent increase) Spring Lake made $134,422 in 2015 (65 percent increase) Berkeley made $247,947 in 2015 (61 percent increase) Harvey Cedars made $38,377 in 2015 (58 percent increase) Manalapan made $618,577 in 2015 (54 percent increase) Neptune made $799,266 in 2015 (51 percent increase)

Bigger towns, though, are less likely to look to their courts for added revenue. Although Toms River brings in nearly $950,000 in municipal court revenue, the amount is less than 1 percent of its $126.2 million municipal budget. Court revenue actually fell 9 percent from 2010 to 2015, with revenue fluctuating each year, depending on the number of cases.

Regardless of what portion of the budget the municipal court revenue is in a town, every little bit it important, said Jon Moran, executive director of the New Jersey League of Municipalities, a trade group for towns.

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Revenue sources for cities and towns have taken a beating over the years, putting more financial strain on municipal leaders, Moran said. The most recent was a $320 million cut from the state’s consolidated municipal property tax relief aid between 2008 and 2010.

“That money has never come back,” Moran said. “That’s what made property taxes skyrocket.”

Towns are still being squeezed, even several years after the recession, said Bill Kearns, an attorney for the league.

“They want their trash picked up, their streets plowed, their communities protected,” he said of residents. “But how do we pay for it?”

Kearns, who has been a practicing attorney for 51 years and has represented several towns over the years, said he's rarely seen a judge lose his or her job over revenue.

"Everyone who appears before the court thinks they're being taken advantage of," said Kearns, the League of Municipalities' attorney. "It's a natural human reaction."

In Howell, municipal court revenue is about 1.5 percent of the town’s $46 million budget, but not having that money could be troublesome for the town, finance director Louis Palazzo said.

“If we anticipate $713,000 (in municipal court revenues) and we only receive half that during the year, we would need other revenue line items to make up that difference,” Palazzo said. “And that’s huge.”

Howell’s municipal court revenue fluctuates slightly from year to year but has generally trended upward since 2010.

“It’s a piece of the pie, but I don’t think it’s the book that’s holding up the side of the table,” he said.

'The right person' for the judgeship

When the Eatontown Council was preparing to appoint a new judge in 2013, it was all about the money, records show.

An email from Councilman Dennis J. Connelly, who is now the mayor, said the borough had lost thousands of dollars in expected revenue while Judge George Cieri was presiding over its municipal court. He said the borough council needed to appoint "the right person" who would "gain the respect" needed to be successful in his position.

Cieri, who is now the municipal judge in Long Branch, declined to comment and said it's improper for a sitting judge to discuss the system of appointing judges.

"Our police department is full of young, aggressive officers that have been producing more summonses than we have seen in several years," Connolly said in one email obtained by the Press. "If these officers get discouraged by our selections for the position of judge and/or prosecutor, this town will see those numbers decline."

The email said the council would select Judge Richard Thompson, who held judgeships in at least nine towns in 2015.

Connolly also referred to a "known sentencing formula," and said defense attorneys were aware of Thompson's abilities and couldn't "try to outsmart or out-lawyer him," which also "saves time and money when moving the court's large calendars."

In October 2015, Thompson was temporarily suspended without pay by the state Administrative Office of Courts while the Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct investigated him. His suspension, issued by the county assignment judge, stated Thompson may have broken rules that require a judge to uphold the "integrity and independence" of the judiciary. The investigation is still pending.

Fred Dennehy, an attorney representing Thompson, said the judge didn't have any communication with officials in Eatontown prior to being chosen.

Dennehy said he couldn't disclose the nature of the complaint against Thompson, but said he's confident that the judge will be vindicated at the conclusion of the investigation.

"I think he's known to be a judge who takes his duties seriously — whether that would translate to more money for a town or the state, I don't know," Dennehy said.

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Records show Eatontown brought in nearly $700,000 in revenue in 2015, $587,000 of which went directly to the town's budget after deducting the court’s operating costs.

After Thompson was appointed in 2014, municipal revenues from court fines rose from $505,000 in 2013 to $668,500 in 2014 — a 32 percent increase. Under Cierci, revenues were $494,700 in 2011 and dropped to $455,700 in 2012.

Examining the process

Moving and closing cases quickly means more room on the docket for new cases, which means more revenue for the municipality. Enter the guilty plea deals — the lifeblood of the municipal court system.

"If you walk into a municipal court, they're operated in such a fashion that the municipal prosecutor will make as many plea bargains as possible so they can get people to plead guilty," said John A. Sweeney, who presiding over Burlington County's municipal court judges from 2000 to 2008.

Anna Lichnowski, a 29-year-old Brick resident, was issued a ticket in Lavallette for littering. She pleaded not guilty and sent the ticket back for a court date.

“When I went to municipal court, there wasn’t even an option to negotiate (with the prosecutor),” Lichnowski said. “They told me I had to pay the fee and there was no fighting it. I was stuck with $425.”

It’s seldom someone will get summoned to court and leave with not having to pay some kind of fine, New Jersey legal experts say.

So few cases go to trial because there's pressure on judges to get through caseloads quickly, in part because judges are responsible for their own budgets, Sweeney said. If the municipal court doesn't make money, at least enough to sustain itself, their budgets will be cut.

"It will never appear fair, even if a judge does his or her very best," Sweeney said. "People are always going to think they're guilty before they walk in."

With a traffic ticket, even if you go to court to fight it, you have the option of pleading to an “unsafe operation” charge, which means no points against your license - but a fine that’s almost twice the amount.

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"When you go to court for the first time, there's no expectation of a trial," said Arnold Fishman, a defense attorney on the State Bar Association's subcommittee on judicial independence. "They look at you like you have two heads."

A 26-year-old Ocean Township man, who didn't want to be named for fear that talking publicly about his discharged drug offense would hurt his employment status, was charged with possession of marijuana when he was 23.

He was given the opportunity to stay out of trouble for a year and then have the charge dismissed, which is a plea known as a conditional discharge, but not before having to pay more than $1,200 in fines and surcharges.

He had to go on a payment plan because he was also paying for college.

If he’d gone to trial and won, he wouldn’t have had to pay the surcharges. But if found guilty, the cost would have been the same or more.

"I paid it over 7 or 8 months," he said. "But there were times when I didn't make the payment, and I'd have warrants out for my arrest. It was an experience I don't want to have ever again."

Community service, rather than a hefty fine, was never an option, he said.

James Gerrow, a former prosecutor and defense attorney in Burlington County who has been practicing law for 41 years, says he still gets requests from prosecutors for dismissals with fines, even if he feels the case is worthy of an outright dismissal.

Municipal ordinances are key for local courts because the entirety of the fees goes to the municipality, Gerrow said.

“I’ve seen cases where I come into a court, and again, there’s no way that if the case were to go to trial – let alone a fair trial – that it would survive,” he said. “For (municipal courts), that’s not what it’s about.”

Gerrow said the courts are funded “on the backs” of the people in the courts.

Sandra Solly, a 75-year-old Howell resident who also owns an unoccupied home in Ocean Grove, was issued a summons after she found out her house had been put on an abandoned property list.

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She owned the home outright, and while it was missing a few shingles and the backyard was overgrown, it wasn’t in poor condition, Solly said.

When she went to court, the Neptune the prosecutor asked her to plead guilty and pay $500 as a fine. She didn’t have to agree to fix the property, but the property would remain on the abandoned list.

“I said I’m not pleading guilty,” Solly said. “I’m not guilty of having an abandoned house. I own my house and it’s not abandoned.”

Solly, who represented herself, was convicted at trial. But on appeal to Superior Court — which Solly filed herself in a handwritten 10-page brief — the judge agreed with Solly and dismissed her fines.

He ruled that the wording in the ordinance was vague and arbitrary.

When Catanese was a prosecutor many years ago, he dealt with defendants who represented themselves. But today, people line up in the halls of New Jersey's municipal courts, day in and day out, waiting to talk to a prosecutor to make a deal instead of hiring their own attorney or fighting the charge themselves.

"What I've seen over the years, especially since the financial crisis, is courts bringing forward the lines of people to pay their fines and costs," he said.

Police influence

Jeff Gold, a former prosecutor in Burlington County who is now in private practice, said there was a police chief in a town he worked in years ago that was "very influential" on what happened in that court.

Gold recalled one instance where he, as a defense attorney, and the prosecutor wanted to have a conference with the judge to discuss a legal issue that would likely have resolved the case. But the police chief knocked on the door and wanted to be part of the conference.

"And the judge really was hard-pressed to tell the chief to get out of that conference," Gold said. "And in fact, the chief stayed there for the conference. That's the kind of pressure municipal court judges are under. Because when they alienate the chief of police, they may not be in the position to have that judgeship very long."

Gold said there are police liaisons in almost every court he practices in.

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“I see good people who are trying to do the right things as judges and prosecutors, but they’re constrained by the fact that they’d like to be reappointed,” Gerrow said. “They enjoy what they’re doing, and they’re trying to give themselves to the communities in which they serve. But there’s feedback. There’s feedback from the revenue sheets.”

Towns rely on the revenue from courts for their budgets, said Catanese, a former judge who recalls the pressure to make money.

"The more revenue, the less they need to raise taxes on the citizens who are going to re-elect council members," Catanese said.

Catanese said judges are borne of politics, but can't be political.

“You can’t be concerned that you will lose your job if you do the right thing,” Catanese said. “We need to rise above the money crunch.”

Former Linden Municipal Court Judge Luis DiLeo was reprimanded by the Supreme Court Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct in January 2014 for denying two defendants their rights to due process during their trial in 2010, according to the decision.

Records show the judge let the trial go on in the absence of a municipal prosecutor, questioned the witnesses himself and then allowed a police officer to cross-examine the defendants. DiLeo then used the information to convict them.

He also wouldn't let them apply for public defenders and forced them to represent themselves at the trial before him.

"The court concluded that Judge DiLeo had 'transformed the role of the court from a neutral and detached magistrate and evoked the specter of the backwater judge, jury and executioner figure that has never had any place in American jurisprudence,'" according to a summary of the decision prepared by the New Jersey Supreme Court Clerk.

National problem

A national task force assembled in March by the Conference of Chief Justices and the Conference of State Court Administrators — both nonprofits whose members are the highest judicial officers and court administrators from each state — is studying the impact of politics, judicial selection and judicial compensation on local courts. The task force is also looking at revenue generation and its impact on municipal courts.

Raftery, the senior analyst with the National Center for State Courts and a staff member to one of the task force's subcommittees, said most states over the last several decades have absorbed municipal courts into the state court system as a way to prohibit revenue generation on the local level.

A 2012 policy paper published by the state court administrators conference said courts should be "substantially" funded from general government revenue sources, not exclusively from the fees and fines generated by the court itself.

In Missouri, where local court revenues were growing out of control, a 25-percent cap was put on municipal court revenues.

In Utah, the mayor of a town will pick the judge, but after that, the decision will go to the voters for a "yes-no retention vote," he said. They also use a performance evaluation system that's available to the public. The way judges are selected at the local level, whether appointed or elected, can be influenced by politics.

"It's a question that comes up over and over, and it's one of the important areas the task force is looking at," Raftery said. "The idea behind (the task force) is to figure out how to address these issues."

Former Burlington County muni court judge Sweeney, who made it a priority to make sure he understood the issues municipal court judges he presided over were facing, said New Jersey's municipal court system is unfair, especially because so much control is in the hands of the municipalities.

Superior Court judges — who are recommended to the state Senate by the governor and handle felony, civil, juvenile and matrimonial cases — don't have to worry about financial pressures. They are all full-time, most with tenure, he said.

"The public, I think, believes the judge, prosecutor, the police are all on one team," he said. "The rest of the courts don't work that way, so why should the municipal courts? It's just lousy."

Kala Kachmar: 732-643-4061; kkachmar@gannettnj.com.