TRENTON — The man was arrested while panhandling outside the Trenton train station. When police officers ran a check, they discovered he owed $9 in fees to the state from a previous charge. He was put in jail for three months, at a far higher cost to taxpayers than the man’s actual debt. At today’s rate of $138 for...
Assemblyman Reed Gusciora in a file photo. Gusciora pushed for legislation allowing judges to reduce state-assessed fees.TRENTON — The man was arrested while panhandling outside the Trenton train station. When police officers ran a check, they discovered he owed $9 in fees to the state from a previous charge.
He was put in jail for three months, at a far higher cost to taxpayers than the man’s actual debt. At today’s rate of $138 for one night in the Mercer County jail, the stay would carry a $12,420 price tag.
When the man finally appeared in court, the public defender, municipal prosecutor and judge each put up $3 to pay the fee.
The prosecutor in that case was Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Mercer). In recounting the story, he doesn’t remember the panhandler’s name, but he says the experience prompted him to push legislation changing the rules on state-assessed fees, which are automatically tacked onto sentences imposed by municipal judges.
For a single marijuana cigarette, Gusciora said, fees that pay for things like lab costs and drug-education programs can cost close to $800.
"Somebody from Princeton or West Windsor just writes a check," Gusciora said. "Someone indigent goes on a payment plan and inevitably falls behind."
Until recently, unpaid fees could never be forgiven, even if the defendant declared bankruptcy. But Gusciora’s measure, enacted in January, allows municipal judges to reduce or eliminate such financial penalties. Judges also can assign community service or jail time to replace fees.
"This is an enormous, enormous change in the law," said Robert Ramsey, a 25-year-veteran public defender in Lawrence Township. "It will help poor people tremendously."
Of his clients who are in jail, he said, most are there for contempt of court because they didn’t show up for a hearing to pay state fees.
The new law recently affected one of Ramsey’s clients. The developmentally disabled man had been in and out of jail a half-dozen times in the last few years for not paying the same $385 he owed in fees, Ramsey said.
"The whole cycle goes over and over again," he said. "You spend all this time in jail and it accomplishes nothing."
Ramsey said the judge decided to forgive the fine.
In another case, in Trenton, a man spent a month and a half in jail because he owed $15 in fees from when he was ticketed for not having a bell on his bicycle, Ramsey said.
"This is the type of stuff that used to go on all the time," he said. "There are thousands and thousands of these people."
State fees have been added by the Legislature over time. For example, someone hit with a $100 fine for talking on a cell phone while driving also will owe $6 to funds that pay for expenditures like replacing body armor and researching spinal cord treatments, said state judiciary spokeswoman Winnie Comfort. Then there’s $24 in court costs, bringing the total to $130.
Different types of offenses carry different fees for different purposes, Comfort said. The state collected $65.6 million in fees from municipal courts in 2009.
Gusciora said the law will not affect the state’s revenue from those fees because the law targets only the people who didn’t have money to pay anyway. Ramsey said the law will save money wasted processing and locking up destitute people.
The judiciary outlined the law in a directive issued in March. Judges are supposed to reduce fees or offer alternative payments only after a defendant has already defaulted and shows he or she does not have the ability to pay.
Paul B. Halligan, Newark’s chief public defender, said the city’s municipal court has always been sympathetic to people who couldn’t afford fees but was never able to forgive them.
"It was sort of an ironclad thing you couldn’t get rid of," he said. "People would be picked up continuously for old fines."