State To Pay NJ Turnpike Victims
The state agreed Friday to pay $12.9 million to the four victims of a 1998 police shooting on the New Jersey Turnpike that caused a national furor over racial profiling.
The state did not admit any wrongdoing in settling the civil lawsuit, but plaintiffs' attorney Peter Neufeld said: “We think that money speaks volumes about what happened that night.”
Attorney General John Farmer said each plaintiff will be paid from $912,000 to $5.8 million.
The four men— three are black, and the fourth is Hispanic— were pulled over near Trenton as they headed to a North Carolina college to showcase their basketball skills in hopes of a scholarship.
Two white troopers, John Hogan and James Kenna, said they stopped the van for speeding. They said they fired 11 shots at the vehicle when driver Keyshon Moore put the van in reverse as the officers approached on foot.
Moore was uninjured, but the others were wounded. LeRoy Grant and Danny Reyes were hospitalized for 13 days and Rayshawn Brown for two.
The four sued, accusing the state police and the troopers of shooting them without provocation. The lawsuit also alleged the troopers pulled the van over solely because the occupants were minorities.
The explosive case led to a national examination of criteria authorities use in stopping drivers.
New Jersey officials later admitted that state troopers stopped overwhelmingly disproportionate numbers of minorities in searches for drugs. Top law enforcement officials knew of the practice since at least 1989 but did not admit it was widespread until 10 years later.
The state agreed to federal monitoring of its traffic stops to avoid a federal civil rights lawsuit.
Kenna still faces an attempted murder charge. Both he and Hogan also face charges of aggravated assault, misconduct and falsifying records to conceal their singling out of black drivers. Charges against the two were thrown out by a judge but reinstated by an appeals court last month.
Attorneys for the troopers, Jack Arsenault and Robert Galantucci, are trying to have the charges dismissed. Both said the public settlement jeopardized their clients' chance at a fair trial.
“These young men deserve to be recompensed, but the state's timing stinks,” said Galantucci, who represents Hogan.
Arsenault said the payment “is going to be inferred as an admission on the part of the state that my client did something wrong.”
Neufeld said it would have been unfair to the wounded men to wait for resolution of the criminal trial.
Reyes, who still has a bullet in his body, will be paid $5.8 million; Grant, who also has a bullet lodged in his body, will be paid $4.4 million. Brown will receive $1.8 million and Moore $912,000.
“Now I have to set new goals, now that I can't play basketball anymore,” Reyes said. “Although the settlement may make the transition in our lives easier, it's only halfway tjustice.”
By RALPH SIEGEL