Public Defender’s Office seeks new director of police accountability • New Jersey Monitor

Danica Rue, who began her career with the Essex County agency in 2010, will become the agency’s first director of investigations and police accountability. The position is designed to enable the agency to assist attorneys in litigating police-related cases, influence statewide policies on criminal justice issues and develop methods to uncover police and prosecutorial misconduct.

The latter is one of Rue’s main goals. She wants to create a database that will allow lawyers to search for examples of police misconduct in one place, rather than the piecemeal approach that has been used so far, which often involves public records requests.

“One of my big goals is to have a system where every lawyer can see where police misconduct has occurred and draw on that knowledge as they pursue their case and defend their clients,” Rue said in an interview with the New Jersey Monitor.

Defense attorneys in criminal cases must investigate whether the officers involved in their cases have previously been deemed untrustworthy. Prosecutors must disclose whether they have evidence that could affect the credibility of their witnesses, but defense attorneys have said that prosecutors often ignore these disclosure requirementswhich can lead to miscarriages of justice and lack of justice.

“We actually have to rely on the police and the prosecutor to give us that information. That way we can make sure that we have that information ourselves without just having to rely on the information being reported to us,” Rue said.

Rue’s hiring is part of a larger plan that prosecutor Jennifer Sellitti must bring holistic approach to your practiceSellitti, who took office in February, said she had considered setting up a database that would collect evidence of police misconduct going back more than a decade.

“It was a little frustrating because I had so many thoughts about what we could do. Until now, we just didn’t have the opportunity to execute on that vision the way I wanted,” Sellitti said in an interview.

Sellitti met Rue when they were interns at the public defender’s office, and Rue said that’s where she fell in love with criminal defense work and decided to pursue a career as a public defender. In 2010, she joined the Essex County Public Defender’s Office – the state’s largest public defender’s office – as an assistant public defender, where she focused on complex forensic cases. In 2022, she was promoted to first assistant, overseeing cases and trials in Essex County.

Rue said Sellitti’s efforts to create a “holistic defense system” appealed to her and she wanted to join the leadership team to offer her expertise as a trial-experienced attorney. It’s not just about serving subpoenas and interviewing witnesses, but also finding housing, social services and mental health treatment for clients, she said.

Sellitti’s call for police accountability is “very fascinating,” she added, stressing that New Jersey has never had a system to track police misconduct — either publicly or in legal circles. The database she is creating will not be available to the public.

Critics say efforts to increase transparency in police misconduct are insufficient

Rue noted that the information will be useful to attorneys during the guilty plea negotiations and cross-examination at trial.

“It’s really about us as public defenders taking matters into our own hands and asking ourselves how we can use what we’ve learned not only to help attorneys work on their cases, but also to change the conversation and change statewide policy around police accountability and misconduct,” Sellitti said.

In 2022, the Attorney General’s Office will launched a website They contain detailed information on ongoing and completed internal investigations, but do not reveal the identities of the officials or specific details.

Sellitti noted that New Jersey has some of the strictest restrictions on access to internal records and lacks a statewide civilian complaint board with subpoena power. That puts New Jersey “in the bottom third when it comes to police misconduct legislation,” she said.

For years, criminal justice activists have been demanding that the state’s police departments be more transparent in their investigations and disciplinary actions. Bills that would expand oversight of police officers and make police disciplinary records public have been introduced repeatedly, but have failed to gain sufficient support in each legislative session.

By focusing on this task, the public defender will be able to identify trends and systemic problems, advocate for further legislation and continue to expose police misconduct, it said.

“Everyone will have access to it, so they don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time so we can hold these police officers accountable,” Rue said.