{"id":10307,"date":"2017-02-01T01:24:49","date_gmt":"2017-02-01T06:24:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=10307"},"modified":"2017-02-01T01:54:59","modified_gmt":"2017-02-01T06:54:59","slug":"judge-to-rule-on-dismissing-indictment-of-suspended-brick-schools-super","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2017\/02\/judge-to-rule-on-dismissing-indictment-of-suspended-brick-schools-super\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge to Rule on Dismissing Indictment of Suspended Brick Schools Super"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Suspended<\/a>

Suspended Brick schools superintendent Walter Uszenski. (File Photos)<\/p><\/div>\n

An Ocean County Superior Court judge will rule within 60 days on whether an indictment of suspended Brick schools\u00a0superintendent Walter Uszenski\u00a0should be thrown out after his attorneys argued the Ocean County Prosecutor\u2019s Office did not include exculpatory evidence in its grand jury presentation.<\/p>\n

Uszenski is charged<\/a> with allowing his grandson to attend an out-of-district preschool he was not entitled to attend, but defense attorney Joseph J. Benedict said during a hearing Tuesday that the child had already attended the school in the past, and that it was among a number of schools recommended for him by the state before his grandfather was ever hired in Brick. The child was returned to the out-of-district school, Ocean Early Childhood Center, after he experienced problems adjusting to a self-contained program within the district, he said.<\/p>\n

Benedict argued before Superior Court Judge Patricia Roe that\u00a0the prosecutor\u2019s office\u00a0should have included those facts in its presentation to a grand jury since it is exculpatory evidence which has the potential to exonerate Uszenski. After the defense filed a motion to dismiss the original Sept. 2015 indictment, the state declined to file a response, instead choosing to present the case to a second grand jury. According to legal briefs filed by the defense and obtained by Shorebeat, the prosecution presented \u201csome, but not all\u201d of the defense\u2019s evidence and the jury was \u201cexposed to personal opinion evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe child had been recognized to have a disability by the time he was 18 months old, and was accepted into the state early intervention program,\u201d Benedict said. \u201cThere was a note recommending that he be placed in a private day school in order to deal with behaviors through socialization, which was something he needed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before his grandfather was ever hired in Brick, Benedict said, a psychologist and staff at Children\u2019s Special Hospital recommended\u00a0Ocean Early Childhood Center as a good option. He attended the school, on Princeton Avenue in Brick, but was then transferred back to a self-contained program within the district, court documents show.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur position is\u00a0that, at the end of that school year, the family decided it was not working for the child,\u201d said Benedict, adding that the in-house program in Brick only lasted two hours per day and four days each week. \u201cThey wanted him back in\u00a0Ocean Early Childhood Center.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time that decision was made, Uszenski had been hired in Brick, his hometown.<\/p>\n

Another focus of the defense\u2019s case zeroes in on the hiring of Andrew Morgan as the district\u2019s new director of special services. Morgan, who is facing charges for allegedly not disclosing a previous drug conviction for which he was granted amnesty<\/a> in the 1990s, replaced another district employee, Donna Stump, after Morgan was hired as a contractor to conduct an audit of the special education department of the school district. The audit found alleged improprieties in the department, sources have said, including an approximately $700,000 budget shortfall, leading Uszenski to recommend new leadership.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is alleged that the audit was a pretense to position Morgan as the director of the special services section,\u201d Al Della Fave, spokesman for the prosecutor\u2019s office, previously said. The prosecution further argued that Morgan was hired as part of the alleged effort to move the superintendent\u2019s grandchild back to a special school.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had this theory of what happened, but as I said to the judge, they came up with this theory before ever talking to anybody,\u201d Benedict said after the hearing. \u201cIf they would have simply talked to the mother, they would have understood what happened here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another aspect of the case was revealed in court Tuesday. As part of the prosecution\u2019s grand jury presentation, it was stated that the case originated by way of the Brick mayor\u2019s office, allegedly after a school\u00a0bus driver brought up the fact that he or she was transporting the child to a private school.<\/p>\n

Reached by phone Tuesday night, Mayor John Ducey said he has cooperated with the prosecutor\u2019s office. Ducey said he did not know if his conversation with the prosecutor\u2019s office was what initiated the case. When asked about the conversation\u00a0with the bus driver, Ducey said, \u201cthat is closer to what happened\u201d but said the person\u2019s complaints were not necessarily about Uszenski.<\/p>\n

\u201cI cooperated with any questions they had as far as things\u00a0they were looking for,\u201d said Ducey.<\/p>\n

Roe has 60 days to decide on a motion to dismiss the indictment, or whether the case should be moved out of Ocean County due to what the defense termed \u201cprosecutorial misconduct\u201d in reference to the grand jury presentation. Roe will deliver her decision by way of a written document.<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Ocean County Superior Court judge will rule within 60 days on whether an indictment of suspended Brick schools\u00a0superintendent Walter Uszenski\u00a0should be thrown out after his attorneys argued the Ocean County Prosecutor\u2019s Office did not include exculpatory evidence in its grand jury presentation. Uszenski is charged with allowing his grandson to attend an out-of-district preschool […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,13],"tags":[24,131,1281],"class_list":["post-10307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-police-fire-courts","category-brick-schools","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-indictment","tag-walter-uszenski"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/uszenski_court.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-2Gf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}