It would seem rather academic that a trial judge should be required to maintain a significant level of neutrality and impartiality.  A judge in Ocean County has had serious problems with that academic concept.  In the last two years he has been reversed by the Supreme Court and the Appellant Division in two rather significant criminal prosecutions.

The first related to a murder trial involving  a defendant with serious psychiatric troubles and a drug addiction who killed both his mother and step-father .  During that trial the trial judge actively participate in the cross-examination of the defendant as well as the defendant’s expert witness and in the process developed what appeared to be rather significant inconsistencies in their testimony. Indeed, while examining these witnesses, the judge suggested to the jury that he did not believe their testimony.  In reversing the defendant’s conviction because of the trial judge’s  improper conduct the Court observed that a defendant is “ entitled to face a single adversary, the State and not a trial judge.”

Recently an Appellant Division panel reversed a case involving a trial based on the sexual assault of a child where the defendant was sentenced to forty years in prison with a  thirty-four year parole disqualifier.  In that case, this trial judge again engaged in a hard cross-examination of the defendant and presented incredulous looks during some of the defendant’s testimony.  In addition, he seemed somewhat accommodating to the child victim and her testimony.  At times, he sought  to  rehabilitate her testimony in material areas.  That case was revised as well.

Last year a judicial survey conducted by the New Jersey Law Journal where lawyers in Ocean County ranked their trial judges found this trial judge at the very low end of the twenty two judges in that county and  gave him a score of 6.36  where the average score was  8.17.   He was also ranked worst in his courtesies  to lawyers and litigants and his biased to gender and race.