Court Opinion

ID: 9715060
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:53:30.237548+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:31.197602
License: Public Domain

O’HERN, J.,
dissenting.
The Court holds today that adherence to agreed-upon procedures, to afford assistant prosecutors a hearing before firing them, impermissibly infringes on a prosecutor’s “unfettered right” to discharge from office an assistant prosecutor. Ante at 432, 749 A.2d at 848-49. I respectfully disagree primarily for the reasons stated by Judge Pressler in the opinion of the Appellate Division *436reported at 317 N.J.Super. 64, 721 A.2d 298 (1998). Specifically, I agree that
[m]ost significantly, the Prosecutor’s adherence to [the Manual’s] procedures confer and has the capacity to confer absolutely no substantive job rights on the employee, unlike the case in Walsh. Chapter 5 does not prescribe any substantive limitation on the Prosecutor’s exclusive disciplinary authority either by defining conduct eligible for any degree of discipline or by superimposing any conditions or standards on the Prosecutor’s substantive disciplinary determination. Nor does it provide for any mediation or arbitration, and, clearly, in view of the scope of the Prosecutor’s authority pursuant to N.J.S.A. 2A:158-15, there is no review of or appeal from the Prosecutor’s unilateral decision. That is to say, the Manual’s adoption of applicable provisions of law with respect to appeals must be read as incorporating N.J.S.A. 2A:158-15, pursuant to which there can be no appeal for at-will assistant prosecutors. Moreover, there is nothing in the disciplinary procedures interfering with the Prosecutor’s right to suspend summarily an assistant prosecutor pending the hearing. Thus, all that the disciplinary procedures require is that the assistant prosecutor be notified of the charges against him and have a right to be heard thereon by the Prosecutor. We do not regard the holding of a hearing and the maximum thirty-day delay in effecting dismissal of a suspended employee as unduly compromising the Prosecutor’s unfettered discretion, particularly in view of the countervailing considerations.
[Id. at 70, 721 A.2d 298.]
I add only these observations. To hold that a prosecutor cannot even agree to use fair procedures in discharging an assistant prosecutor sends the wrong message to county prosecutors in whom so much discretion is vested.
In its previous decisions, this Court has explained that agreed-upon “procedures for implementing substantive decisions ... pose no significant threat of interference with the public employer’s ability to make substantive policy determinations.” Council of N.J. State College Locals v. State Bd. of Higher Ed., 91 N.J. 18, 33, 449 A.2d 1244 (1982)(citing In re Local 195, IFPTE v. State, 88 N.J. 393, 417, 443 A.2d 187 (1982)); see also Bethlehem Township Bd. of Ed. v. Bethlehem Township Ed. Ass’n, 91 N.J. 38, 47, 449 A.2d 1254 (1982) (distinguishing between evaluation criteria and evaluation procedures); State v. State Supervisory Employees Ass’n, 78 N.J. 54, 90-91, 393 A.2d 233 (1978)(concluding that “promotional criteria are not mandatorily negotiable while promotional procedures are so negotiable”). Such procedures often have the beneficial effect of making the decision maker’s ultimate *437judgment a better one. Local 195, supra, 88 N.J. at 409, 443 A.2d 187.
We have always viewed a prosecutor as holding a unique position in the legal community whose duty is not just to obtain convictions “but to see that justice is done.” State v. Ramseur, 106 N.J. 123, 320, 524 A.2d 188 (1987).
Society wins not only when the guilty are convicted but when criminal trials are fair; our system of the administration of justice suffers when any accused is treated unfairly. An inscription on the walls of the Department of Justice states the proposition candidly for the federal domain: “The United States wins its point whenever justice is done its citizens in the courts.”
[Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 87, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 1197, 10 L.Ed.2d 215, 218-19 (1963).]
In terms of justice, “[a]udi alteram partem [to hear the other side] is said to be ‘certainly the oldest established principle in Anglo-American administrative law.’” Julian M. Joshua, The Right to be Heard in EEC Competition Procedures, 15 Fordham Int’l L.J. 16 (1991 ){quoting Bernard Schwartz, An Introduction to American Administrative Law 105 (2d ed.1962)). What separates our system of law from all others is our unflinching insistence on the value of procedure. It is the “Due Process” of the law that is guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment, not any particular substantive right.
I realize that the prosecutor who made the agreement with his assistants has died, but I fail to understand why it is so burdensome that a successor prosecutor could not take the small amount of time that would be required at least to hear the assistant prosecutor’s side of the case. That is the fair thing to do. Emerging democracies understand the value of fair procedure.
The right to an administrative hearing is of paramount importance because it compels a decision-maker to see and hear the affected individual and confront that person’s side of the dispute. As a result, a hearing may well forestall an incorrect decision or cause an agency to exercise discretion more favorably to the individual than it otherwise would have done. Beyond these utilitarian benefits, a hearing is important because it safeguards an individual’s dignitary interest, treating that person as a human being....
[Michael Asimow, Toward a South African Administrative Justice Act, 3 Mich. J. Race & L. 1, 6-7 (1997).]
*438The Court should not hold that a prosecutor cannot agree to be fair about implementing a decision to fire an assistant prosecutor.
STEIN, J., joins in this opinion.
For reversal and remandment — Chief Justice PORITZ and Justices GARIBALDI, COLEMAN and VERNIERO — 4.
Dissenting — Justices O’HERN and STEIN — 2.