Ocean County Man Sues Judge Who Jailed Him Because He Had No Money To Pay Littering Fine

Anthony Kneisser says all he was trying to do was set up a payment plan to pay a fine he received for throwing a cigarette butt out the window of his car.

Instead, he says, he wound up in jail in Burlington Township, because he could not pay the fine in full the day he appeared in court.

Kneisser, of Jackson, filed a lawsuit against Burlington Township and Dennis McInerney, the township's municipal court judge, charging the decision to jail Kneisser violated due process and discriminated against him based on income. The suit was filed in federal court in Camden.

Now, the American Civil Liberties Union has joined in, labeling the action to jail him akin to a modern-day debtors' prison.

Kneisser was a 20-year-old student and part-time line cook earning $9 an hour in May 2014 when he was ticketed for flicking a cigarette butt out of his car.

According to the court documents and a news release from the ACLU, Kneisser, who made $150 per week at the time, went to municipal court to try to work out a payment plan or to arrange community service because the fine plus court costs was $239.

McInerney refused and ordered Kneisser to call people he knew for money, according to the lawsuit. When Kneisser told the judge he didn’t have anyone to call, McInerney sentenced him to five days in jail on the grounds of refusal to pay the fine, according to the suit. Officials immediately handcuffed him and placed him under arrest.

“It was humiliating to be treated like a criminal just for being broke,” Kneisser, now 22, said. “I couldn’t believe I was being sentenced to jail for not being able to pay a ticket for littering. Some people in the courtroom gasped, and others laughed at the idea of being jailed over a $200 littering ticket. At my job at the time, $200 was one week’s pay. I filed this suit to get justice, not just for myself, but to make sure that no one else has to go through what I went through, or worse, for being broke.”

Kneisser, who filed the lawsuit in September 2015, says that while he was in the holding cell, he was not allowed to use the phone at first. When he was finally permitted to use the phone, he was able to contact his father, who had made the suggestion of trying to set up a payment plan, according to the ACLU. Once he realized Kneisser faced jail time, his father realized the situation had gotten more urgent and paid the fine.

Jailing Kneisser put him at risk of losing his job, and put his dog in danger as well because the dog would have been without care for five days, the ACLU said.

“It’s unconstitutional for a municipal court to send someone to jail — to rip someone from their job, their family, and their everyday life — for not being able to pay a fine. The court’s actions amount to a modern-day debtors’ prison,” said Jeanne LoCicero, ACLU-NJ deputy legal director and one of the attorneys representing Kneisser. “Municipal courts should take a person’s ability to pay into account and make sure no one goes to jail without first having access to a lawyer.”

Kneisser's lawsuit contends McInerney did not try to determine whether and to what extent he was able to pay the fine, and says he would have paid the fine and court costs on an installment plan. It also notes that state law treats littering as a fine-only offense, and says McInerney lacked “the authority or jurisdiction to substitute this offense with imprisonment.”

The lawsuit also notes that Burlington County Superior Court Judge Thomas P. Kelly, who heard Kneisser's appeal in September 2014 and reduced his fine to reflect time spent in Burlington Township's custody, apologized to Kneisser, saying state judiciary procedure dictates that "indigent defendants convicted of traffic violations are permitted to pay their fines in installments."

"The results of this are so exaggerated by the offense itself that it disturbs me as a judge that it came to this," Kelly said to Kneisser, according to part of the hearing transcript quoted in the lawsuit. " ... this policy ... appears on its face to not be in line with the correct legal procedures," the transcript quotes Kelly as saying. "All he wanted to say is give me some time, and it just wasn't offered." The transcript quotes Kelly as pointing out that Kneisser never refused to pay the fine.

The ACLU-NJ said it has reason to believe Kneisser is not the only low-income New Jerseyan who has been jailed for not having money to pay court fines.

“The 6 million cases before municipal courts each year in New Jersey routinely end in hefty fines and jail time,” ACLU-NJ Legal Fellow Alexi Velez said. Velez is studying the role of municipal courts in the criminalization of poverty through a grant from the Maida Fellowship Program at Rutgers Law School.

“When people cannot afford to pay the fines and fees courts impose, the snowballing debts can quickly become insurmountable and risk of jail time increases," Velez said. "The role of these courts as revenue generators and debt collectors can undermine their purpose and challenge their integrity.”

More than 30 years ago, the United States Supreme Court ruled that jailing people because of inability to pay court fines and fees is an affront to American values and the Constitution. In that 1983 case, the court made a distinction between unwillingness to pay and inability to pay. Federal law has banned debtors’ prisons since 1833.

“A person’s freedom should not be conditioned on money they do not have,” said Marguerite Kneisser of the law firm Carluccio, Leone, Dimon, Doyle & Sacks, LLC, who initiated the lawsuit and serves as co-counsel with the ACLU-NJ. She is Anthony Kneisser’s sister. “What happened to Anthony erodes public faith in our democratic institutions and goes against what our Constitution stands for.”

Kneisser filed the civil rights lawsuit in September 2015 in United States District Court.

According to a report in the Courier-Post regarding the original filing of Kneisser's lawsuit, McInerney is a Moorestown attorney as well as the appointed judge for Burlington Township. He did not comment on the suit at the time, but filed a response to the suit last December claiming immunity from tort claims because he is a judge and also rejecting each of Kneisser's claims without additional comment.

Image via Shutterstock