A recent series of missteps by municipal court judges has prompted New Jersey Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner to remind the judiciary about the due process and equal protection rights of defendants.

Rabner mentioned disapprovingly a municipal judge's jailing of a defendant who was unable to pay a $239 fine for littering and a former municipal judge who pleaded guilty to falsifying records in order to increase the amount of revenue collected by the municipalities where he worked. The chief justice also spoke of a soon-to-be-issued report to the Supreme Court suggesting an overhaul of policies and laws pertaining to municipal court.

Fines should be imposed on defendants without regard for a town's need for revenue, Rabner said in the April 17 memo to the state's municipal and Superior Court judges. And where a defendant cannot pay a fine, the court must explore other methods of punishment besides imprisonment, Rabner said in the memo.

Rabner said the reminder was prompted by recent revelations about “disturbing practices” by some municipal judges, and the cases he referenced “call to mind some troubling practices in other jurisdictions.”

The memo made apparent references to Richard Thompson, a former municipal judge in nine Monmouth County towns who pleaded guilty to a fourth-degree crime of falsifying records, and Dennis McInerney, a municipal judge in Burlington Township who faces a trial for civil rights claims by a man who was jailed when he could not pay a $239 littering fine. Rabner's memo did not mention Thompson or McInerney by name but Judiciary spokesman Peter McAleer said the memo was referring to those two.

Rabner said in the memo that judges “must ensure that justice is carried out without regard to any outside pressures.” Equally straightforward is the requirement that “imposition of punishment should in no way be linked to a town's need for revenue. And defendants may not be jailed because they are too poor to pay court-ordered financial obligations,” Rabner said.

U.S. District Judge Noel Hillman of the District of New Jersey granted partial summary judgment on March 30 to Anthony Kneisser in Kneisser v. McInerney. The suit claimed McInerney, who still sits as the presiding municipal judge in Burlington County as well as the judge in Burlington Township and several other municipalities, violated Kneisser's constitutional rights by failing to consider his indigent status before jailing him. Kneisser was issued a summons for throwing a cigarette butt from his car window in 2014. At the time he was a student and part-time line cook who earned $9 per hour. He went to court seeking a payment plan but was placed under arrest after McInerney refused.

Kneisser demonstrated that his Fourth, Sixth and 14th amendment rights were violated by a policy employed by McInerney's court concerning treatment of indigent defendants, Hillman said. Kneisser also demonstrated that Burlington Township is liable for those violations, Hillman said. But claims against McInerney remain unresolved because of disputed issues of material fact concerning McInerney's role as administrator in collecting fines and its implications for his role as a judge in collecting those fines.

Thompson pleaded guilty to falsifying records in the fourth degree and was admitted to pretrial intervention on March 23. His record will be expunged if he stays out of trouble for one year. The municipal court revenue issue came out in the open in 2014 in Eatontown when one member of the town council urged his colleagues to hire Thompson as judge based on assurances that he would collect more in fines than the incumbent.

ACLU of New Jersey staff attorney Alexi Velez, who represents Kneisser, said McInerney's court, with its stated policies mandating immediate payment of fines, “was acting like a modern-day debtors' prison.”

McInerney's attorney in his official capacity, David Serlin of Moorestown, New Jersey, and his attorney in his individual capacity, John Slimm of Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman & Goggin in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, did not return calls.

Thompson's lawyer, Charles Uliano of Chamlin, Rosen, Uliano & Witherington in West Long Branch, New Jersey, also did not return a call.

Changes could be coming to municipal courts soon, Rabner said, citing a report that the court will issue soon, which will ”bring to light additional concerns and offer practical suggestions to help start a larger discussion about our municipal court system.” The Supreme Court Committee on Municipal Court Operations, Fines and Fees is led by Assignment Judges Julio Mendez of Atlantic County and Lisa Thornton of Monmouth County.