Article from The Daily Wire by Ashe Schow.

“State Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner took early steps Thursday to dismiss hundreds of thousands of cases that are more than 15 years old because they were never prosecuted,” NJ.com wrote. “The move follows a scathing report from the state judiciary that found local courts were too often using warrants and license suspensions to squeeze money out of low-level defendants, among other problems.”

The court may throw out nearly 788,000 open warrants for minor offenses, like parking tickets. An order issued Thursday would create a process for dismissing both the open warrants and the unpaid tickets.

“Those old outstanding complaints and open warrants in minor matters raise questions of fairness, the appropriate use of limited public resources by law enforcement and the courts, the ability of the state to prosecute cases successfully in light of how long matters have been pending and the availability of witnesses, and administrative efficiency,” State Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner wrote.

Cases that could lead low-income defendants to be jailed for something as minor as an old parking ticket would be thrown out, but more serious offenses — like drunk driving or speeding — will remain.

Read the entire article at The Daily Wire.

Image Credit: By Alex Proimos from Sydney, Australia (N.Y.C. Dept of Finance: Parking Violations) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons