Post by WaTcHeR on Dec 12, 2005 20:58:14 GMT -5
One judge + eight towns = "JUSTICE INC."
12/12/2005 - Henry J. Broome, 63, a municipal court judge in eight Atlantic County towns, often has pressured defendants into pleading guilty to charges they never committed, according to a Press of Atlantic City review of his courts.
With so many courts and a private Linwood-based law practice, Broome goes out of his way to avoid trials. Two months ago in Brigantine, for example, Broome gave what he called "the break of a lifetime" to Michael Santamaria, who was charged with assaulting a female acquaintance. Santamaria claimed he was the victim, not the assailant. In exchange for not having a trial, Santamaria was allowed to plead guilty to being a nuisance, which is a local ordinance violation. A review of Broome's courts showed:
* Defendants often plead guilty unaware of what their fines will be. In other courts, they know that ahead of time.
* The fines are almost always the highest they can be, much higher than those imposed in other southern New Jersey courts. The end result is that Broome's courts generate a lot of money.
His last appointment was in Linwood five years ago. From 2000 to 2004, municipal court revenue there increased by 90 percent, the highest increase of any Atlantic County municipal court.
His eight part-time judgeships pay him a salary of more than $150,000 a year. Broome's first appointment was in Pleasantville in 1976. He served there for six years. It's the only court that he ever lost. By that time, he had already picked up three other judgeships - Somers Point, Northfield and Absecon. Since then, he added Brigantine, Mullica, Longport, Egg Harbor City and Linwood.
In December, he interviewed in Galloway Township. He was not chosen.
Municipal court is known as the people's court. It's where most people come into contact with the court system. It's where relatively minor offenses, drunken driving charges and speeding tickets are resolved.
Broome's first appearance in his courtrooms is on a television screen where he explains how municipal court works. The taped message saves him 10 minutes. It especially helps Broome when he has to appear in two courts on the same day, which happens several times a month.
$100 rule
A controversial policy that helps boost revenue in Broome's courts is the so-called $100 rule. No other area court has such a rule. Defendants are warned they must pay the first $100 of their fine the day they plead guilty or they will spend the night in the county jail.
Broome defended the rule. People should expect to pay their fines after they plead guilty, he said, noting he got the idea from an Administrative Office of the Courts seminar.
"The AOC once questioned me about it, but I never heard anything from them again after I told them that it was the AOC that suggested doing it in the first place," Broome said.
Broome doesn't enforce the rule, but defendants such as Angela Campbell of Egg Harbor City don't know that. Campbell sat in the back of a crowded Egg Harbor City courtroom April 6, fearful that she would soon be taken away in handcuffs.
"Make a phone call. Call somebody. Anybody. But you need to come up with $100 today," Broome told the woman, "or else you are going to the county jail."
"Then, I guess I'm going to jail," she told Broome after he asked for the money. "I don't have it, and I didn't know I needed to have it today."
Two hours later, Broome relented and allowed her to begin paying her fines in two weeks. She later told a reporter she was upset by the whole incident.
"It looked like he was going to send me away," she said. "All because I didn't have any money that day. It didn't seem right."
Louis Belasco, the presiding municipal court judge for Atlantic and Cape May counties, said he was concerned with the $100 rule as well as other policies that The Press of Atlantic City uncovered in its review of Broome's courts. He said he would be looking into some of them to see if they should be changed.
"There's nothing wrong with telling someone they have to pay their fines," Belasco said, "but $100 can be nothing to someone and then it may be a fortune to someone else. A blanket $100 rule may not be fair."
Judges should not pressure defendants into taking plea bargains, Belasco said. He added that he was troubled that the fines always seemed to be the same, noting: "Each case has its own set of circumstances. The fines and the sentence should reflect that."
Broome said that if he is guilty of anything, it is of trying to help people.
"I simply explain to them that they may be shooting themselves in the foot by going to trial," Broome said. "They could lose their license. They don't realize they could be walking into a briar's patch they can't get out of."
Broome can come off as gruff and hard-nosed, but there's a compassionate side to him as well.
If you are in the military, it pays to wear your uniform in Broome's courts. He'll often suspend the fine for someone caught speeding. He did it for a Coast Guardsman last month in Linwood.
Earlier this year in Longport, a Pennsylvania man appeared before him for speeding. He told Broome that he and his wife had been hurrying to Ocean City to find their son who had run away from home.
Broome initially wanted to dismiss the charge, saying the police officer should have escorted the couple to Ocean City instead of giving them a ticket.
Instead, he found them guilty of unsafe driving but suspended much of their fine.
Broome said he has never denied anyone the right to a trial. He said he just wants to make sure they know the consequences of what might happen if they are convicted.
The problem with that approach, according to William Cappuccio, a municipal court judge who sits in Port Republic and Buena Vista Township, is that defendants may think they have no choice but to plead guilty.
"If you start urging them to take the plea bargain, they might think you have prejudged the case," Cappuccio said. "It's up to the prosecutor to sell the plea bargain. A judge needs to stay neutral."
High fines
Broome justified the high fines he imposes by saying he believes they will serve as a deterrent to prevent a second offense.
"We can't put these people in jail for a speeding ticket," Broome said. "The only impression we can make on someone is the fine."
Egg Harbor City Manager Thomas Henshaw praised Broome's work and the fines he imposes. He is a good judge, Henshaw said.
"Why shouldn't the fines be the maximum?" he asked, during a recent interview with Broome after court in Egg Harbor City. "That's that much less that the city taxpayers have to pay."
Mark Roddy, a lawyer with an extensive municipal court practice, said there's too much pressure on municipal court judges to generate money for the towns. Roddy said it would not surprise him if towns make decisions on judicial appointments based on how much money a judge promises to bring in.
"This is supposed to be about justice, not money," he noted.
Last year, Egg Harbor City municipal court generated more than $412,000, with about half of it going to the municipality. After paying salaries, the city realized a profit of about $140,000.
The difference between what Broome imposes and what other judges charge is significant. The fine for unsafe driving ranges between $56 and $156 (Broome almost always charges $156) and defendants have to pay an additional $250 state surcharge. Still, most defendants want to plead guilty to unsafe driving because no insurance points are involved.
A first-time drunken-driving conviction results in a $456 fine in Broome's courts; other judges impose the minimum fine of $306.
Lori Lenzi of Galloway Township didn't have her insurance card with her when an Egg Harbor City police officer stopped her earlier this year. She had insurance; she just didn't have the insurance card with her when the stop was made. Other judges dismiss such tickets; Broome imposed a $156 fine.
Margate Municipal Court Judge James Savio said it is difficult to impose the maximum fines with the state surcharges as high as they are. A lot of judges cut back on the regular fine because of the surcharges, he explained.
Former Assignment Judge Philip Gruccio of Vineland said Broome's high fines reinforce the perception that municipal courts are cash cows for municipalities. Gruccio favors full-time regional municipal courts instead of the current system that lets each town appoint its own part-time judge.
The sheer volume of cases in municipal court forces judges and prosecutors to dispose of cases in an assembly-line manner. But in Broome's courts, they move with a blink of an eye.
Avoiding trials
Sometimes he moves too quickly. In a Longport case earlier this year, Broome accepted a lawyer's claim that her client was guilty of driving under the influence. A judge is supposed to first address a defendant to make sure the facts support the guilty plea before accepting it. Broome, however, forgot to have the woman admit her guilt in open court. A Superior Court judge reversed Broome.
In another case last July, an Atlantic City manpleaded guilty to an offense he never committed. Mark Palmer appeared before Broome on a charge that he allowed an unlicensed driver to operate his car.
Palmer explained to Broome that he only let the person drive his car after the driver showed him a Mexico driver's license. Palmer was not in the car when police stopped it and issued a ticket to the driver. Palmer later received a ticket from Longport police.
"I don't know what more I could have done," Palmer told Broome in court, noting that the person showed him his license.
First, Broome allowed the initial ticket to be amended because it referred to a law that no longer exists. So Palmer was charged with knowingly allowing a driver whose license was suspended to operate his car.
Palmer told a reporter recently that the message from Broome was clear: Plead guilty or else. Palmer was offered the opportunity to plead guilty to being an unlicensed driver, a no-point violation, even though he was and is a licensed driver.
"Fact is that a conviction on the original charge would result in a six-month loss of driving privileges," Broome warned. "You can have a trial, but if I were your brother, I'd tell you ..."
"I'll take the deal," said Palmer, who was fined $356. Broome suspended $50 of the fine.
To this day, Palmer wonders whether he made the right decision.
"There's no question the judge didn't want me to go to trial," Palmer told a reporter. "I really didn't do anything wrong and I felt like I was strong-armed into pleading guilty. He was basically telling me I'm going to lose my license for six months if I go to trial. I didn't want to take the risk."
Carlos Plaud, of Absecon, appeared in February 2001 before Broome in Somers Point on charges of careless driving, leaving the scene of an accident and failure to report an accident. He told Broome that the accident was not his fault and that he left the scene after waiting more than an hour.
Yet without the prosecutor even present, Broome arranged for a plea bargain by himself. He told Plaud to plead guilty to failure to report the accident because that violation doesn't involve any points. Broome then said he would dismiss the more serious charge of leaving the scene of the accident.
Again, Plaud told Broome that the accident was not his fault when Broome asked him about the careless driving charge.
Broome offered to downgrade the careless-driving charge to unsafe driving, which, he said, would not result in any points. Broome suggested he take the plea bargain. Plaud, like Palmer, agreed to do it.
Kristina McErlain of Mays Landing wasn't about to take the plea bargain that was offered to her in Egg Harbor City in early April.
She remembered a police officer signaling to her to move out of the passing lane. She told a reporter she pulled over as soon as it was safe to do so. A few days later, she received a ticket for failing to yield to an emergency vehicle. She told Broome she was innocent.
Are you sure you don't want a no-point ticket? Broome asked her.
No was her answer.
An hour later, she appeared with the prosecutor before Broome once again. Broome dismissed the charge after the prosecutor conceded he couldn't prove the charge.
"I wonder what someone else would have done in my position," McErlain later told a reporter. "I felt as if he was pressuring me into pleading guilty. I wasn't going to do it."
Nicole Mylnarcsyk got her day in court before Broome.
She appeared before him in Egg Harbor City last June, expecting to be cleared of charges that she left trash outside a home she had once owned. When the tickets were issued, she already had sold the house. She had an agreement with the new owner to remove the trash.
But Broome found Mylnarcsyk as well as the new owner guilty. He said they both made out all right. She got a good price for the house and the buyer got a nice home for his daughter, he said.
Mylnarcsyk appealed. Superior Court Judge Carmen Alvarez quickly reversed Broome in October following a short hearing.
Alvarez poked fun at Broome's decision. He found just about "everybody standing that day in the courtroom guilty," she said, noting that it was wrong to have found two people guilty of the same offense.
"This (the conviction of Mylnarcsyk) does not really comply with the spirit of the law," Alvarez said.
