By Kevin Shea and Rebecca Everett | For NJ.com
Most people released from a county jail emerge clutching their personal possessions, or maybe carrying them in a bag.
Ed "NJ Weedman" Forchion walked out of the Mercer County Correction Center just before sunset Thursday evening pulling a cart stacked with papers and binders accumulated from his two criminal trials. He was acquitted of witness tampering hours before.
A small gathering of supporters greeted him with “gifts.” He smoked one in front of the jail’s sign. Then he got into a car with his girlfriend Debi Madaio at the wheel, lit up another and went on Facebook live. (Debi also broadcast his release moments earlier.)
“I can’t believe I’m out,” Forchion said as Debi drove. “I can’t believe you’re actually sitting there,” she said, and leaned over to kiss him.
Forchion reacts to someone who beeped their horn in support as he talked in front of his shuttered restaurant Friday, May 25, 2018 in Trenton. (Kevin Shea | For NJ.com)
For the next 10 minutes, he smoked and talked about getting out of jail, and the change his eyes underwent (he now wears glasses) during his 15 months behind bars. He suspects the spectacles he needs is from not being able to smoke weed in jail.
He did shout-outs to fans he knew by name and the broadcast was interrupted by people calling his phone. One asked to smoke with him. “I got a lot of making up to do,” he replied.
Then they went to Red Lobster for dinner – he loves fish - and Forchion nodded off at the table, exhausted.
Before that, and on Friday at a press event he called at his shuttered restaurant in Trenton, the litigious Weedman was also talking about starting up his weed activism and filing legal action about the 447 days he spent incarcerated during his two witness tampering trials. (A Mercer County judge denied several times his motions to get out of custody.)
Can he get some sort of compensation for that time?
It’s complicated, legally.
New Jersey has a system for prison inmates who were convicted at trial and were later exonerated to recover money for their time spent incarcerated.
But for pre-trial prisoners who win at trial it’s different, and usually involves a lawsuit.
Richard J. Fuschino Jr., a criminal defense attorney in Philadelphia, said that people detained pretrial have very few options.
Unless they can prove that they shouldn’t have charged in the first place, then their pre-trial detention was court-ordered and is completely legal, regardless of the verdict, Fuschino said. “I’d be very surprised if he was actually going to recover anything,” Fuschino said. “But he does have real damages — 400 (plus) days in jail.”
Weedman greets a supporter in Trenton Friday May 25, 2018. (Kevin Shea photo)
And there's more
He said that immunity rules mean that Forchion cannot sue the judge who ordered him to be detained, nor the prosecutor who presented the case to the grand jury and argued it at trial. He would have to sue the police department and municipality where he was charged and claim civil rights violations and malicious prosecution.
And to succeed, he would have to prove that there was no probable cause for the arrest in the first place, which could be hard to do given the fact that a grand jury indicted him and at least part of one jury thought there was evidence to convict, Fuschino said.
“You have to get over that hump of there’s no probable cause,” he said. The issue isn’t whether the person is guilty, since that’s for the jury to decide. It’s just about whether he should have been in court in the first place.
“It would almost have to rise to the level of prosecutorial improper conduct or a complete fabrication” without evidence, Fuschino said.
Forchion greets a supporter. (Kevin Shea photo)
Another lawsuit?
It’s possible that the municipality will want to settle the suit, so he could collect some cash that way, Fuschino said.
Fuschino said it’s too late for him to argue that he was denied a speedy trial or that the bail reform act violated his rights by not giving him an opportunity to pay a cash bail. Theoretically, Forchion could file suit against the state, arguing that it’s bail reform laws that made detention without bail an option violate his civil rights.
On Friday afternoon, at his closed eatery on East State Street, NJ Weedmans Joint, Forchion alternately greeted supporters again, while he spoke to the media. As he did, many who were just walking by and stopped to shake his hand and welcome him “home.”
Forchion said he will seek for damages in his pre-trial jail time, but he's going to do it by amending an existing federal lawsuit he filed against the Trenton police and some officers who gave him several tickets related to his restaurant – which he suspects may have to led to the 2016 drug investigation and his first arrest.
Weedman smokes some weed after speaking with the media on Friday, May 25, 2018. (Kevin Shea photo)
'I'll fight a jaywalking ticket'
“That starts Tuesday,” Forchion said, as people repeatedly nudged joints into his hand. He’s flying to Atlanta to meet with one of his civil rights attorney’s attorney about the amendment, he said. (He also hinted he’s got some outside, financial support headed his way.)
Using the federal system to fight a state system has been done before.
Not long after New Jersey's bail reform changes went into effect on Jan. 1 2017, a federal class-action lawsuit, funded by players in the bail bonds industry and started when a Camden County man ordered to wear a GPS ankle bracelet after a bar fight, argued that the right to post bail is enshrined in the Eight Amendment to the federal constitution.
A federal judge denied a request to roll-back the bail reform changes.
Forchion already has another suit at the state level, against the Mercer County Prosecutor's Office, who led the drug raid that led to the marijuana dealing charges, and then the witness tampering allegations in 2017.
But Forchion said he's lost faith in the state judicial system. It doesn’t not mean he will not try any avenue there. "I’ll fight a jaywalking ticket,” he said.
The Joint and the Next Case
Meanwhile, Forchion said he intends to re-open the restaurant, NJ Weedman's Joint, hopefully by July 1.
And he still has the marijuana dealing charges, for which he's been indicted. He's going to trial for that case too, he said. And he again issued a personal challenge for Mercer County Prosecutor Angelo Onofri to try the case himself. He said he's beaten two assistant prosecutors and wants to topple the top prosecutor.
That case, he said, relies solely around the informant he was accused of intimidating – and he's won twice at trial. Forchion said the prosecutor’s office specifically sent the man into his restaurant, “with a mission to entrap me.”
Forchion in the overgrown backyard of his restaurant, NJ Weedmsn's Joint, in Trenton on Friday May 25, 2018. He hopes to reopen the joint by July 1. (Kevin Shea photo)
Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@kevintshea. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccajeverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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