TRENTON, N.J., Jan. 14 (UPI) -- Two New Jersey state troopers charged with shooting three young, unarmed black and Hispanic men in a case that set off a national debate on racial profiling, pleaded guilty Monday in an agreement that spares them prison and even probation.
John Hogan and James Kenna admitted to official misconduct for filing false reports about traffic stops on the New Jersey Turnpike and to hindering apprehension for giving false information in the shooting investigation. They were sentenced immediately to pay the mandatory penalties required of all convicted felony defendants. They are also barred for life from government employment. The U.S. Justice Department has agreed not to pursue criminal charges.
Hogan and Kenna were originally charged with attempted murder and aggravated assault for the shooting. They fired into a van carrying four New York men to a basketball clinic in North Carolina. The three passengers were wounded. The troopers said that the van rolled toward them and they believed that the driver was trying to run them down.
"On April 23, 1998, the lives of six young men came together on the New Jersey Turnpike, or, I might say, they collided," said Special Prosecutor James Gerrow Jr.
While racial profiling -- the practice of targeting people for stops or searches based on race or ethnicity -- had long been an issue in New Jersey, the shooting on April 23, 1998, created an uproar. In New Jersey, the state Senate held hearings that included a 13-hour grilling of former Attorney General Peter Verniero, by then a chief justice. There were allegations of similar practices by police in other states, especially on the East Coast highway corridor that serves couriers bringing illegal drugs from Florida to the northeast as well as truckers and tourists.
The state signed a consent agreement with the Justice Department that includes monitoring of the state police. Gov. Christie Whitman also appointed Carson Dunbar, a former state trooper who had been with the FBI for years, as the first African-American to head the agency.
At Monday's hearing, Gerrow said the state of New Jersey took responsibility for the shootings by ignoring a culture in the state police that encouraged racial profiling. Kenna, who had been involved in another shooting about a month earlier when he fired at a suspect who was attempting to flee in a police car, was allowed to return to work without counseling. Under questioning by the prosecutor, the troopers described an informal training in which drug arrests were the goal and traffic stops targeting certain racial and ethnic groups the means.
Gerrow said prosecutors have concluded that the Hogan and Kenna have no criminal responsibility for the shooting. Judge Charles Delehey was also sympathetic, calling their actions the result of "misguided zeal."
But the Rev. Reginald Jackson, head of the Black Ministers Council of New Jersey was angry about the plea bargain, calling it politically motivated.
Speaking to reporters outside the Mercer County Courthouse, he asked, "If it was just misguided zeal, why has it taken more than three years, an 18-month investigation and more than a million dollars just to say to the state of New Jersey that it was just misguided zeal?"
Kenna spoke briefly after the hearing, apologizing to the families of the victims. His lawyer, Jack Arsenault, said that he has been working as a laborer and has a "bleak" future.
