George E. Norcross III, one of the most powerful people in New Jersey politics for the last 35 years, today pleaded not guilty to racketeering charges in a 13-count state indictment alleging that he manipulated development deals along the Camden waterfront and profited from millions of dollars in tax breaks.
“Anyone reviewing the indictment will see these are charges in search of a crime,” said Norcross’ attorney, Michael Critchley.
Norcross’ brother, Philip, and his longtime personal attorney, William Tambussi, also entered not guilty pleas; so did Dana Redd, a former Camden mayor and state senator, and developer John O’Donnell. A sixth defendant, Sidney Brown, will be arraigned next month; his attorney, Lawrence Lustberg, is currently representing a co-defendant in U.S. Senator Bob Menendez’s federal corruption trial in New York.
Most of the 40-minute court hearing in front of Superior Court Judge Peter Warshaw was spent negotiating a protective order limiting the public release of discovery, including over 13,700 pages, and 2.5 million documents and audio files.
Critchley and other defense attorneys complained that discovery had not been turned over at the time the indictment was announced.
“Let me let me be candid about where I’m going with this,” Warshaw said. “You can only imagine my enthusiasm for having served as a referee as to what, if any, of this discovery is subject to a protective order, and it seems to me that this is something where all the very experienced lawyers in this room are capable of sitting down and having a conversation and figuring out a reasonable accommodation to this without knowing anything.
Warshaw floated the idea of a temporary order until the defense had an opportunity to review the discovery.
Deputy Attorney General Andrew Wellbrock
Critchley and Kevin Marino, who is representing Philip Norcross, suggested that he plans to seek a dismissal of the charges, and intends to challenge the legality of recorded conversations.
“ I’m not entirely sure that the motion to dismiss the indictment is necessarily dependent upon all that discovery,” Marino said. “One of the questions that we want to talk about that as a group, but I think the indictment stretches the Rico statute beyond all recognition. It’s obviously a novel use of the statute.”
Marino also objected to the state’s delay in turning over documents from the Department of Justice, something Warshaw acknowledged he had little influence over.
“They were in a sufficiently strong position with respect to the Department of Justice to include allegations in that indictment that clearly depend upon, rely upon those materials that they didn’t even ask for until a week ago. So that’s part of the problem,” Marino said. “It’s just another example of you would think that if you invent investigated a case for six years and you proceeded with such fanfare to announce it at a press conference and to put documents before the the members of the press. You would think that you would have thought ahead. Maybe we should get approval from the Department of Justice to actually be able to give the accused these materials? They didn’t do that.”
Under an agreement with prosecutors and defense attorneys, Warshaw signed an interim protective order that will expire on September 9. Most documents will be delivered this week, Wellbrock said.
Jeffrey Chiesa, a former U.S. Senator and New Jersey Attorney General, appeared on behalf of Tambussi.