The Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office has come to the same conclusion as their counterparts in Hudson County, declining to file charges against Al Alvarez after Katie Brennan accused him of raping her back in April 2017.Â
By John Heinis/Hudson County View
The MCPO cited “a lack of credible evidence and corroboration that a crime committed” as their reasoning for closing the case, as NJ Advance Media first reported.
Citing conflict of interest statutes, New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal moved the case out of Hudson County “out of an abundance of caution” and the state Office of Public Integrity and Accountability later decided that Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez acted appropriately.
Minutes after the MCPO decision was announced, Suarez said that this conclusion should close the door on any notion that she tried to interfere with the investigation.
“The decision by the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office in conjunction with the earlier
conclusions reached by the Office of Public Integrity and Accountability and the Attorney
General’s Office should leave no room for interpretation about the independence of the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office in the handling of this matter,” Suarez said in a statement.
“In 2015, I was sworn in as the first female Prosecutor in the history of Hudson County. We at the HCPO hold sacred the protection of victims and victims’ rights. However, our pursuit of justice for victims of crimes must be balanced with our sworn duty to uphold the Constitution and the bedrocks of our criminal justice system, including the presumption of innocence and the necessity of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”
While the latest news in the ongoing controversy surrounding Alvarez, a former top official as the New Jersey School Development Agency, and Brennan, the chief of staff at the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency, Suarez is likely to still face scrutiny.
A special committee of state legislators investigating Alvarez’s hiring has requested emails from Suarez that would allegedly show communications about the situation prior to The Wall Street Journal running her explosive allegations in October.
Around that time, HCV filed an Open Public Records Act request for a copy of any police reports pertaining to Brennan’s case, but the MCPO denied the request since the records were part of a criminal investigation.
The Middlesex review was a sham from the get go. The decision by the HCPO not to prosecute made the case unprosecutable by anyone, since that decision would be enough by itself to establish reasonable doubt. How could a jury convict when they would hear that the HCPO thought the case was so weak it shouldn’t have even been brought?
This is a he said she said case with a credible complainant and a credible alleged perp, in which the complainant’s actions after the incident were 100% consistent with her subjective belief that she was raped.
If it is SOP that cases like this are not prosecuted because more corroboration is needed, and that standard is consistently followed by prosecutors across the state, the public should be clearly and unambiguously told that.
If that is indeed the existing standard, let’s have an honest public discussion over whether that standard is appropriate. There are legitimate arguments to be made on both sides of that debate, but until there is real transparency about the existing policy it will appear that prosecutors are arbitrarily using their “discretion” which inevitably leads to inconsistent unfair decisions and even corrupt decisions.
Poor Katie Brennan, we’re so sorry for you.
Did you get the message from the collective?
Individuals don’t matter; only the elites matter.
NJ is Beria Politburo county and Al is a “protected class.”
This is genuinely serious issue and it deserves to be discussed by serious people capable of serious thought.
Try giving that a try. Or are you genuinely incapable of being anything more than a doofus?
the latter.
It’s quite serious and has not been taken seriously by the political elites who always take care of themselves, first and foremost. There it is and it’s quite ugly. Your virtue signaling changes nothing. Are you or Ravi Bhalla going to speak out and condemn it? Will Dawn Zimmer raise her voice?
Of course not and we all know why.
So to you a seious discussion about a serious issue consists of more incoherent rambling about political elites? You truly are a doofus to the core.
Feel free to share the doofus version of what should have occurred here, starting after Ms. Brennan reported the rape to law enforcement.
Should the case have been prosecuted? Or at least gone to a grand jury to decide? What should the Murphy transition team have done when it learned of the issue? Should a man be deprived of a job because of an unproven accusation that prosecutors decline to charge? Is the declination to prosecute enough to “clear’ him or did the transition team have an obligation to conduct some kind of diligence itself about the accusation. What should have happened after Ms. Brennan complained to Murphy’s Counsel? Should Alvarez have been fired? Should he have been permitted to keep his job because the accusations were unproven? Was the half assed choice not to fire him but to ask him to leave “voluntarily” without a timeframe a good compromise path or a weeny cop out?
These are the real questions serious thoughtful people are considering while the Real Doofus of Hoboken prattles on incoherently about “political elites.”
The more you prattle away incoherently the more of an irrelevent laughing stock you become, though admittedly you may have already maxed out.