LaBruno lawyer hints at reopening bid for bail

Former Dumont Mayor Andrew LaBruno made a brief appearance in court this morning, with another hearing set for April 15.

LaBruno was arrested on November 17 for allegedly drugging and raping an underage boy just two weeks after losing his bid for State Assembly.  He has been held in the Bergen County Jail since his arrest after Superior Court Judge Gary Wilcox agreed that he was a risk to the community.

Wilcox said today that he received a “quite voluminous” motion to reopen LaBruno’s detention late Friday night.  Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Sara Wilson said she hadn’t seen it until last night; she asked for a week to respond.

That motion has been marked confidential.

Prosecutors allege that LaBruno sprayed an unknown substance into his hand and placed it over the mouth of a teenage boy, causing the incapacitated victim to become dizzy, and then forced him to perform fellatio on him.  He’s accused of committing sexual penetration through the use of coercion and without consent, and knowingly engaging in sexual conduct with a child.

A grand jury subsequently indicted LaBruno on five counts, including official misconduct, since he was on duty as a Jersey City police sergeant at the time of the incident and “identified himself as a police officer during the incident for the purpose of hindering his own apprehension.”

Last month, prosecutors offered LaBruno a plea deal that included a mandatory five years in prison without parole for second-degree official misconduct, followed by seven years for first-degree aggravated sexual assault.

Wilson said that LaBruno would be subject to Megan’s Law, parole supervision for life, a restraining order under Nicole’s Law that would prevent him from contacting the victim, and a psychological evaluation.

LaBruno’s attorney, Jeffrey Garrigan, said he was still waiting on some outstanding discovery.

Wilson said she was “aware of the additional items requested.”

“A number of them will be sent by the end of today. We are still waiting on the completion of the cell phone extraction, which I’ll turn over as soon as it’s available, and the items that were error codes — if you want to put it that way — on counsel’s screen. I certainly will get to that by the end of this week,” Wilson said.  “I’ll go line by line for that email to make sure we have an answer as to each of those items.”

Garrigan said, “I don’t think any of that impacts the reopening motion.”