The defendants were arrested in the borough of Oaklyn, New Jersey, a tiny suburb (population, 4,000) across the Delaware River from Philadelphia.

Officer Robert Kane joined Oaklyn’s small police force in 1984. In 1989, he made 92 arrests for drunken driving. The officer with the second-highest number made six arrests.

As early as 1985, the Oaklyn Police Department received complaints from drivers that Kane stole money from them during traffic stops. The department didn’t follow up on these complaints because it didn’t deem them credible.

A similar complaint was made on March 3, 1990, with a woman claiming that Kane stole money from her during a stop to check for motorists driving under the influence, or DUI. Unlike earlier complaints, this one ended up at the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office. The office did not take any action, again finding the complaint lacking credibility.

On August 5, 1990, Kane stopped a motorist for an expired inspection sticker. The motorist and his passenger complained that Kane stole $80. This motorist had not been arrested for drunken driving. When Kane’s supervisor asked him about the complaint, Kane turned in a handwritten note and $40 in cash that he said he found under the driver’s seat in his patrol car. Again, prosecutors did not seek an indictment, but they set up a sting operation.

Nine months later, on May 7, 1991, two undercover officers, a male and a female, posed as motorists. Kane stopped them. He issued a Breathalyzer test to the male driver, who hadn’t been drinking but had gargled with mouthwash, and told him that he failed. He also took $30 in marked bills from the undercover officer’s wallet. The money was later found in Kane’s pocket.

Kane was charged with theft and official misconduct. He pled guilty to 16 counts of official misconduct on August 29, 1991, and later received a sentence of eight years in prison. Fifteen of the misconduct counts involved thefts from motorists, in amounts ranging from $5.12 to $150. The other count was for falsifying the undercover agent’s test results.

At the time of Kane’s plea, a prosecutor outlined Kane’s misconduct. “These are all basically car stops, some for drunk driving, others for motor vehicle violations, expired tags, that sort of thing, but they are all car stops,” the prosecutor said. “They are all situations where the driver would be removed from the car, he would be searched … his or her wallet would be taken and then they would be taken to the station and when the wallets would be returned certain moneys would be missing.”

After Kane’s conviction, defendants started filing motions to overturn their convictions. In June 1992, judges in the Oaklyn Borough Municipal Court granted new trials to 11 defendants, whose charges were then dismissed. These defendants had been identified in the indictment against Kane.

Separately, other defendants began moving to have their convictions vacated, pursuing relief in both state and federal courts. On June 23, 1992, several motorists, led by Virginia Dickerson, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for New Jersey, seeking to have their convictions thrown out based on violations of their civil rights. The plaintiffs sought class-action status, which was granted two months later.

The class included those arrested for DUI between January 1, 1989 and May 7, 1991. Of the 155 defendants, 124 had pled guilty. The others had been convicted at bench trials in Oaklyn Municipal Court.

The lawsuits claimed that the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office had failed to investigate allegations of Kane’s misconduct and failed to disclose the substantial number of complaints against him. Between August 1990 and May 7, 1991, prosecutors received about one complaint a month about Kane.

The Camden County Prosecutor’s Office fought efforts to throw out most of the convictions, arguing that these defendants had pleaded guilty under oath to drunken driving. There was no actual record that these drivers had a blood-alcohol content in excess of the state’s limit; at the time of their arrests, the Breathalyzer equipment used in New Jersey did not provide printouts. The readings were simply recorded by Kane.

The prosecutor’s office also argued that overturning these convictions would allow dangerous drivers back on the streets, endangering public safety. On February 22, 1993, the parties entered into a settlement and agreed to allow a special master to review these cases and make recommendations to the court. Stephen Orlofsky, a former U.S. magistrate judge, was appointed special master.

As Orlofsky conducted his review, the appellate courts in New Jersey issued two opinions throwing out the convictions of four of the class members. It said that if prosecutors wished to retry these defendants, it needed to do so without any evidence gathered by Kane. Orlofsky issued his initial report on September 12, 1994, and then a supplemental report on May 10, 1995. He said that in every case he reviewed, the conviction was so tainted as to prevent a fair trial.

The state objected to Orlofsky’s recommendations. It said he strayed outside the rules of the stipulations and had consulted one of the New Jersey appellate rulings, which didn’t look at the totality of all the evidence and had applied a more forgiving pathway to throwing out convictions.

Judge Joseph Irenas accepted Orlofsky’s recommendations on July 17, 1995, vacating 155 convictions. “We agree with the Special Master that there are no cases in which independent evidence would suffice to sustain conviction,” Judge Irenas wrote in his order.

Judge Irenas harshly criticized the prosecutor’s office. “There is a difference between a guilty plea based on the false testimony of a co-defendant or laboratory technician, where that falsity is unknown to the prosecutor, and a guilty plea based on false evidence from a police officer who had been investigated by the Prosecutor’s Office for over a year for giving false testimony,” he wrote. “In this case, the guilty pleas were tainted by more than the false evidence. The Prosecutor’s Office suspected Kane's misconduct for at least fifteen months without revealing it to the persons whom they were prosecuting on the basis of his testimony.”

As part of the agreement, the defendants split a settlement pool of $147,000, which was reimbursement for any increases in their auto insurance based on the drunken-driving arrest and conviction. In addition, the New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles agreed to remove the convictions from their driving records.

Howard Borden, the Camden County Prosecutor at the time of Kane’s arrest, said that Kane was not charged after the complaints because of the time needed to gather evidence that could result in a conviction. “We like to ensure that when a person is indicted, they will be convicted of the charges,” Borden told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “I feel that if we had acted prematurely, it might have tipped off Kane, and there is every reason to believe he would be on the streets today.”

Several of the motorists filed lawsuits against Kane, Oaklyn, and other parties, seeking compensation for their wrongful convictions. The outcome of these lawsuits isn’t publicly available.

– Ken Otterbourg