A former Monmouth County municipal court judge has pleaded guilty to falsifying records in connection with a scheme of fixing municipal court dispositions to benefit several municipalities where he served as a judge, Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher J. Gramiccioni announced.
Richard Thompson, 62, of Middletown, pleaded guilty to one count of fourth degree falsifying records in connection with his public office as a municipal court judge, according to the prosecutor.
Appearing in court on Feb. 2 in Freehold before Presiding Criminal Court Judge David F. Bauman, Thompson admitted that on numerous occasions while presiding as a judge from January 2010 to October 2015, he suspended fines he issued in connection with the disposition of motor vehicle tickets and improperly converted the money to contempt of court assessments.
Thompson further admitted that the purpose of this scheme was to steer money to the municipalities that employed him as a municipal court judge, and these actions deprived Monmouth County of money it would otherwise be entitled to under state law, according to the prosecutor.
Monmouth County Assignment Judge Lisa P. Thornton suspended Thompson from his judicial duties in Colts Neck, Bradley Beach, Eatontown, Middletown, Neptune City, Oceanport, Rumson, Tinton Falls and Union Beach by on Oct. 23, 2015.
Christopher Swendeman, a spokesman for Gramiccioni, said Thompson’s case was referred to the prosecutor’s office by the judiciary.
A two-year investigation by the prosecutor’s Financial Crimes and Public Corruption Unit revealed that Thompson suspended fines and converted money to contempt of court in approximately 4,000 municipal court matters throughout his nine towns.
To effectuate the scheme, Thompson improperly converted fines adjudged on motor vehicle citations to contempt of court sanctions when there was no legal basis to do so, Gramiccioni said.
In certain instances, Thompson would inaccurately state that a defendant issued a traffic citation was held in contempt of court and write such findings on citations when there was no legal basis to do so.
In an effort to conceal the scheme and prevent its detection, Thompson committed these acts after citizens and, in some cases, attorneys had already departed the courtroom.
New Jersey law permits a judge to hold an individual in contempt for various reasons, including failure to appear before the court and disrupting court proceedings. The law further provides specific requirements that must be followed before a judge may hold someone in contempt of court, including giving the individual an opportunity to be heard.
According to state law, monetary fines levied in municipal court for motor vehicle offenses are split equally between the municipality and county. However, contempt of court fines are fully retained by municipalities. In instances where motor vehicle citations are issued by New Jersey State Police troopers, 100 percent of the monetary fines are given to the state treasury, according to the law.
Gramiccioni said Thompson’s conduct unfairly benefitted the towns where he served at the expense of the county’s treasury. As a result, between Jan. 1, 2010 and the date of his suspension on Oct. 23, 2015, Thompson unlawfully diverted more than $500,000 in fine money from Monmouth County to the municipalities where he sat on the bench.
As such, Thompson’s conduct was likely to curry favor with the municipalities that continued to employ him as a judge, allowing him to retain his seat on the various municipal courts for many years, according to the prosecutor.
Thompson could face a sentence of 18 months in prison, but his plea agreement calls for non-custodial probation and allows him to apply to the pre-trial intervention program. As part of his plea, Thompson is forever disqualified from being a municipal court judge or holding any other public employment, according to Gramiccioni.
When Swendeman was asked if authorities are investigating whether any elected officials in the towns where Thompson worked as a judge were aware of what he was doing to monetarily benefit their community, the spokesman said the prosecutor’s office does not comment on future plans as to whether it continues investigations.
