When George E. Norcross III and others were arraigned on Tuesday, Superior Court Judge Peter E. Warshaw, Jr. was unmistakably in complete and total control of his courtroom.
And it’s possible that Warshaw could wind up a perfect match for what is, at least right now, the highest-profile case in the state involving one of the most powerful political insiders in New Jersey history. For better or worse, the assignment of Warshaw means Norcross and others will get a fair hearing in front of a judge who knows how to run a trial.
The 62-year-old son of a plumbing supplies salesman and a high school English teacher who grew up in Scotch Plains, Warshaw was a career prosecutor. He joined the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office as a law clerk in 1986 after graduating from Widener Law School and stayed there for 26 years. He worked his way up from line prosecutor to first assistant.
After Gov. Chris Christie declined to reappoint Prosecutor Luis Valentin in December 2010, he instead nominated Warshaw. The Senate confirmed him by the end of the following month.
At the time, State Sen. Joseph Kyrillos (R-Middletown) described Warshaw as a “prosecutor’s prosecutor.”
In 2012, Warshaw was nominated to a Superior Court judgeship; the move allowed Christie to name Christopher Gramiccioni, part of a grifting power couple with close ties to the governor, as the new prosecutor.
He was immediately assigned to the Criminal Division in Mercer County and became presiding judge in 2015. He received tenure in 2019 and doesn’t reach his mandatory retirement age until September 2031.
People who have worked with him describe Warshaw as smart, reasonable, and entirely comfortable in his own skin. He’s expected to aggressively enforce the deadlines he sets and won’t hesitate to, metaphorically speaking, smack a prosecutor or defense attorney across the face with a 2×4.
It might be reasonable to view Warshaw inherently as a law and order guy, but those who know him warn that he’ll be quick to hold a prosecutor’s feet to the fire. As a former prosecutor, he knows the job, and after twelve years on the bench, there aren’t many tricks he hasn’t seen.
And one of the worst-kept secrets in New Jersey politics is the historically contentious relationship between county prosecutors and the attorney general’s office. County prosecutors don’t especially like it when the AG’s office interferes and tells them how to do their jobs.
(When former Newark Mayor Sharpe James was sentenced following his conviction on fraud charges in 2008, U.S. District Court Judge Bill Martini filleted federal prosecutors for seeking a 20-year prison sentence and settled on 27 months instead. With the U.S. Attorney at the time, Chris Christie, sitting in the front row, Martini told the government: “Don’t talk about a history of corruption unless you can prove it.” Martini, a former Republican congressman, had served as an Assistant Hudson County Prosecutor and Assistant U.S. Attorney.)
While Warshaw is a registered Republican, he has a reputation for being apolitical. He doesn’t miss general elections but infrequently votes in primaries; two of the three primaries he participated in over the last decade were in gubernatorial years.
He also has a clear understanding of community advocacy. In 1968, his father, a U.S. Army veteran, Marx Brothers fan, and devout member of the local Catholic Church, was part of a mob of more than three dozen Scotch Plains residents who attended a local council meeting to demand the removal of a vicious neighborhood dog who had attacked a young girl.
The activists presented a petition signed by 55 residents — not an unimportant block in local elections – demanding that the local officials get rid of the dog immediately, alleging that “the lives these children should not be jeopardized because of the laxity of the township ordinances.”
“It seems almost as if a dog receives more protection than a person,” the judge’s father told the council.