CHRIS CHRISTIE
Governor

State of New Jersey
Office of the Public Defender

JOSEPH E. KRAKORA
Public Defender

P.O. Box 850
Trenton, NJ 08625
KIM GUADAGNO
Lt. Governor

Tel: (609) 292-7087 · Fax (609) 777-4496
E-Mail: TheDefenders@opd.state.nj.us

April 18, 2017
Glenn A. Grant, J.A.D.
Acting Administrative Director
of New Jersey Courts
Richard J. Hughes Justice Complex
25 Market Street, PO Box 037
Trenton, NJ 08625-0037
Dear Judge Grant:
Please accept this letter as the Office of the Public
Defender’s formal response to Director Honig’s April 7 letter.
Before addressing each request in the letter separately, I want to
make a couple of overall observations. First, the law has only
been in effect for three months so requests to make fundamental
changes in the process are clearly premature; they cannot possibly
be based on empirical data.
Second, changes made based on
anecdotal evidence are almost always ill-advised.
In this
connection, it should be noted that as part of his anecdotal
evidence Director Honig relies on cases in which the State did not
even move for pretrial detention. (Although the request would not
in fact be more legitimate had the State unsuccessfully moved for
detention.) Third, I could identify cases in which our clients
have been subjected to detention motions and/or detained that are
arguably inappropriate but to request changes in the PSA or the
DMF based on them would be counter-productive.
The first request by the Attorney General is that unlawful
possession of a firearm and eluding be reclassified as “violent”
offenses for purposes of the PSA.
Obviously, the PSA is a
scientifically validated instrument as required by the statute
itself.
Reclassification of offenses as “violent” would change
the scoring on the NVCA flag and thus be in contravention of the
statute. In other words, the data apparently shows that defendants

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 charged with unlawful possession of a weapon and eluding are not
in fact more likely to commit crimes of violence on pretrial
release. To reclassify the offenses would render that portion of
the PSA invalid.
The second request is to modify the DMF to a default position
that Pretrial Services recommend against release in these cases
regardless of the PSA score.
This request simply ignores the
analytics underlying the DMF and its relationship to the PSA score.
The Attorney General makes this request based on three weapon
possession cases in which the State did not move for detention and
one eluding case.
Finally, the Attorney General proposes a recommendation
against release for all cases in which the defendant is on pretrial
release, probation or parole. The PSA already gives substantial
weight to the fact of a pending charge in the score and the offenses
for which a defendant is on either probation or parole are factored
in the score as well.
Again, the Attorney General bases this
request solely on anecdotal evidence involving cases in which he
is unhappy with the outcome. Unfortunately, some defendants will
reoffend while on pretrial release regardless of the system in
place. At least now the courts are making these decisions based
on empirical risk assessment.
For these reasons, the Office of the Public Defender opposes
the requests made by the Attorney General.
Respectfully Submitted,

Joseph E. Krakora
Public Defender
JEK/mc
c: Elie Honig, Director
Alexander Shalom, ACLU

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