New Jersey governor Jon Corzine has nominated a judge for the state's municipal court that activists have pointed out has an antigay record. Steven J. Zaben, nominated officially in February, has said that of the 200 public lewdness cases he's heard regarding Palisades Interstate Park, more than half involved gay men. According to Gay City News, these cases resulted in guilty pleas by the defendants and harsh sentencing by the judge, including $1,000 fines, two years on probation, a two-year ban from the park and the highway that runs through it, or psychiatric counseling.
Gay and civil liberties activists say that Zaben gives lighter sentences to heterosexuals, but he told the News that he's "not biased. In all the cases that I hear I don't take a position as to race, gender, or sexual orientation."
Men arrested in the park said they exposed themselves only after being urged to do so by an undercover police officer.
In a 2005 case, Zaben concluded that because the defendant was gay, he was in the park to have a sexual encounter. The defendant said he was in the park for lunch when a plainclothes officer said to him, "Show me what you got... Take it out, show me what you got."
The conviction was overturned in 2006 by an appeals court, which questioned the detective's account and Zaben's logic.
Corzine has nominated Zaben to preside over the state's worker's compensation court.
"This nomination is akin to nominating Pee-wee Herman for the Nobel Prize in economics; it's patently obscene," Steven Goldstein, chairman of Garden State Equality, told the newspaper. "Judge Zaben is not even fit to preside over The People's Court." (The Advocate)
