New Jersey drops racial profiling charges

TRENTON, N.J. -- New Jersey's attorney general agreed Friday to drop criminal cases against 100 defendants who claimed they were targets of racial profiling.

The cases involve minority motorists who were stopped and searched by state troopers and later charged with various drug and weapons offenses.

The decision involved 100 defendants charged in 86 cases between 1989 and 2001, said Peter Aseltine, a spokesman for Attorney General David Samson. Fifty-nine convictions involved people who have either served time, been paroled or will be eligible for parole within a year.

Those convictions will be erased, defense attorneys said.

Appeals court rulings allowed defendants stopped before April 20, 1999, to challenge their cases by saying they were the targets of biased troopers. That was the date New Jersey admitted its troopers practiced racial profiling.

Peter C. Harvey, director of the Division of Criminal Justice, said contesting the profiling allegations in each case would require an enormous commitment of the department's resources.

Friday was the deadline for the state to produce more documents detailing how state troopers practiced racial profiling, materials the judge overseeing the cases ordered the state to release.