3 train NJ public defenders alleviate workplace discrimination that statewide leaders condoned

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Three one-time public defenders say in lawsuits they suffered a variety of workplace discrimination before they were forced out or fired due to trumped-up misconduct charges.

In separate lawsuits, the three describe Joseph Krakora, the top lawyer in the Office of the Public Defender, as knowing or causing hostile work conditions, and at times personally driving internal disciplinary actions that ended their public service careers.

“Defendants ended plaintiff’s state government career in a heartbeat to cover up their own wrongdoing,” Heather Timmons’ February 2021 suit says of Krakora and his former top assistant, Kevin Walker.

Jennifer Sellitti, a spokesperson for the Public Defender’s office, said the office cannot comment on pending litigation.

Timmons was a 17-year public defender and assigned to the Middlesex County office when she says she was targeted by Krakora and Walker over the operation of the Middlesex office during a leadership change, she says in her suit, filed in Superior Court of Mercer County .

In about 12 weeks in early 2020, Timmons says she went from a well-thought-of attorney to being embroiled in an investigation of another Middlesex office employee, which led to her downfall, she alleges.

The other employee, a Middlesex office secretary, had for years displayed a toxic work persona and was once suspended for five days. Timmons, a Black woman, also said the employee once wrote the n-word next to Timmons name on a work form, the suit says.

Suddenly, this employee’s actions in the office led Krakora and Walker to look at Timmons, and they turned an internal investigation around, asking a state investigator to examine Timmons’ actions.

During several weeks of back-and-forth acrimony, Timmons said Walker always brought up race, telling Timmons she needed to “soften” her approach, as she was acting like a “strong black woman.” She filed a complaint against Walker for his racial language toward her.

Timmons was terminated in the spring of 2020 and Krakora cleared Walker of any wrongdoing in Timmons’ racial complaint, her suit says. It alleges the office violated the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (LAD) on the basis of race, sex and retaliation.

Kathleen Redpath-Perez, a public defender in Mercer County from 2010 to 2019, sued in the fall of 2021 alleging a host of mistreatment by fellow Mercer office staffers. She alleged she was bullied by a superior as part of an initiation, harassed due to medical issues she suffered and a male colleague made an unwanted sexual advance.

As she dealt with mental health issues in mid-2019, the office offered no assistance or accommodations, despite aiding other staffers with similar struggles, and she ultimately was forced to resign in late 2019 after internal accusations that she made ethical lapses on the job, her suits says.

Krakora and Walker were the unethical ones, Redpath-Perez charges, for the way they handled her “sham” disciplinary hearings.

The office then interfered with her attempts to set up a private law practice, she says.

Redpath-Perez says she had stellar annual reviews before May of 2019, when she was promoted to assistant deputy public defender. Her 13-count suit, also filed in Mercer County superior court, alleges multiple violations of the Law Against Discrimination.

David Nufrio, a public defender in Sussex County, where he filed suit in January 2019, says he was a 30-year office veteran and respected team player when his career fell apart in 2017 and 2018 at the age of 60, also during a leadership changes in his office.

He was eventually terminated and replaced by a less-experienced attorney, his suit says.

Nufrio was first summoned to the public defender’s headquarters in Trenton in 2017, where Krakora and Walker told him he was being demoted under the “bogus” pretext he had not disciplined a subordinate attorney for being late to court.

What followed, Nufrio charges in his suit, were a cascading set of meritless internal disciplinary charges and hearings, and other derogatory actions, all spearheaded by Krakora, Walker and a Sussex office attorney the two preferred.

A day after one of his disciplinary hearings, but before he was officially terminated, someone from the Sussex office “maliciously dumped” the personal belongings from his office all over his driveway.

A Sussex office employee allegedly told staffers not to speak with Nufrio and threatened him with arrest if he came into the office, and later accused him of stealing a computer tablet, which a Sussex office staffer had reported stolen – causing the police to come to his home.

Nufrio’s five-count suit alleges violations against the Law Against Discrimination due to his age and a hostile work environment among other claims.

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Kevin Shea may be reached at [email protected].

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