Robert Kugler

October 31, 2007 - 1:47pm

District 8 GOP mailer calls into question country's legal foundation, experts say

John Adams sought a standard for the emerging country's legal system when he represented a British soldier no other lawyer would defend. Adams argued that unless the enemy soldier was subject to a fair trial under the law, there was no sense standing up to the British crown.

"When Adams looked back on his career late in life, he said it was the most honorable thing he had ever done," Justin Loughrey, president of the Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey (ACDL-NJ).

Loughrey and others in the New Jersey legal community are invoking the second president of the United States and rising to defend due process against what they see as an attack in the district 8 legislative contest.

Republicans have issued campaign mailers that call into question Democrat Tracy Riley's husband's representation of a man charged in a terror conspiracy plot.

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October 31, 2007 - 9:51am

In key race, a Judge weighs in

Republicans thought they hit op research gold when they realized that the husband of Democratic Assembly candidate Tracy Riley, running in the suddenly competitive eighth district, was the court-appointed lawyer representing one of the men accused on a plan to kill soldiers at Fort Dix.  In a mailer sent out last week, the three GOP candidates said: "Now, Tracy Riley's Family Law Firm is Defending Him … Tracy Riley: Whose values will she represent in Trenton? Ours? Or theirs?"

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Should a federal judge be calling a direct mail piece "despicible" a week before a hotly contested election?

YES, the Burlington GOP mailer was over the line and I'm glad someone called them on it
49%
NO, Judges should avoid influencing politics no matter what
51%
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