Mercer Prosecutor Punts Again

The sad saga of two university administrators whose indictment was trumpeted and exploited in the media only to see charges dismissed just three weeks later because they never could have been convicted just reached a new, cynical denouement.

Yesterday, Mercer County, NJ, Prosecutor Joseph L. Bocchini Jr. quietly posted a PDF of the filed August 28th dismissal in the news section of his Web site.

If ever one wanted proof that a media drive-by occurred for these two administrators, the prosecutor's quiet posting of this document 23 days too late is proof.

There's no statement or explanation accompanying the notice. And the underlying motion also was not posted.

This is a legal media relations horror story for the two indicted/unindicted victims -- and while it may be legal, it stinks.

I just checked the Times of Trenton in which my OpEd criticizing the woefully lacking media treatment of the dismissal first alerted the public to this mess. There's not even a one-paragraph mention of the dismissal's sudden appearance on the prosecutor's Web site.

So, for now, and forever, these two (whom I do not know) know that the prosecutor's office may have covered its rear end for possible civil litigation. But they also know that it really didn't care about giving the two administrators a fair shake.

And, perhaps to annoy the former defendants the dismissal notice was scanned on a weird angle. And, at least as far as the prosecutor's 2007 news page is concerned, this document appears to be the only PDF and the only filed document. This, too, I find significant.

My media relations verdict: media justice denied.