Public defender’s office touts new police accountability director

Office of the Public Defender in the Richard J. Hughes Justice Complex in Trenton (Photo by New Jersey Monitor)

The New Jersey Office of the Public Defender has created a new role intended to improve the quality of the office’s investigations and promote policies to address systemic misconduct.

Danica Rue, who started her career with the office in Essex County in 2010, will be its first director of investigations and police accountability. It’s a position the office says will allow it to help attorneys litigate police-related cases, influence statewide policies around criminal justice issues, and develop ways to track police and prosecutorial misconduct.

That last item is one of Rue’s key aims. She wants to create a database that will allow attorneys to search in one place for examples of police misconduct instead of the piecemeal approach they must now take that often involves public records requests.

“One of the big goals that I want to see is that we have a system where every attorney can see where police misconduct has been found, and have that knowledge while they go forward with their cases in defending 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 found not to be credible. Prosecutors are required to disclose whether they have evidence that could taint the credibility of their witnesses, but defense attorneys have said prosecutors often flout these disclosure requirements , which can lead to wrongful convictions and a lack of due process.

“We actually have to rely upon the police and the prosecuting agency to give that information to us. This will allow us to make sure that we have that on our own without just relying upon that being reported to us,” said Rue.

Rue’s hiring is part of a larger plan state Public Defender Jennifer Sellitti has to bring a holistic approach to her office . Sellitti, who assumed her position in February, said she’s thought about creating a database compiling evidence of police misconduct for more than 10 years.

“It was a little bit frustrating because I had so many thoughts about things we could be doing. We just didn’t have the ability to execute that vision the way I wanted to until now,” Sellitti said in an interview.

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

Rue said Sellitti’s efforts toward a “holistic defense system” spoke to her, and she wanted to join the leadership team to offer her expertise as an attorney who has worked in trials. 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 push for police accountability was “very intriguing,” she added, stressing that there’s never been a system in place to track police misconduct in New Jersey — neither publicly nor within attorney circles. The database she’s creating will not be available to the public.

Effort to expand transparency around police misconduct falls short, critics say

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

“It’s really about the public defender’s office taking matters into our own hands and saying, how can we use what we learn to not only fuel the attorneys working on their cases, but to change the conversation and to change the policies statewide about police accountability and police misconduct,” Sellitti said.

In 2022, the Attorney General’s Office launched a website detailing active and resolved internal affairs investigations, but the data does not reveal any officers’ identities or specific details.

Sellitti noted that New Jersey has some of the tightest restrictions on accessing internal affairs records, and there’s no state civilian complaint review board with subpoena power. That puts New Jersey in the “back of the pack when it comes to police misconduct legislation,” she said.

For years, criminal justice advocates have called on the state’s police departments to be more transparent with investigations and discipline their cops face. Bills that would expand oversight for cops and make police disciplinary records public have been repeatedly introduced, but languish each legislative session without enough support.

Now that the public defender’s office is concentrating on this effort, they’ll be able to identify trends, systemic issues, push for more legislation, and continue exposing police misconduct, they said.

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

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