Superior Court Judge Bradford Bury couldn’t believe what was happening in his courtroom.

The judge was overseeing a hearing to decide if a man should remain locked up in New Jersey’s civil commitment system, the controversial program that holds sex offenders long after their prison sentences are done if they are deemed too dangerous to reenter society.

The state brought a psychiatrist into Bury’s courtroom to help argue that the man, whose prison sentence ended two decades ago, should remain detained.

But, Bury soon learned the same psychiatrist testified 20 years earlier when the man was first committed — for the defense. That time, the doctor argued the offender should not be committed.

The judge suggested lawyers for the Attorney General’s office find a new psychiatrist. But, after speaking with their supervisor, the state’s lawyers said they didn’t need to switch doctors. They didn’t see a problem and were ready to move ahead.

Bury was stunned.

“I almost fell off my chair,” he said.

That 2020 case was one of many examples of what Bury believes are deep problems with how New Jersey’s civil commitment program is administered.

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The 71-year-old former judge — who was the primary judge presiding over sex offender civil commitment cases in New Jersey for two years — said he sent the Attorney General’s office a lengthy report last year about severe problems with how its staff administered and enforced the state’s Sexually Violent Predator Act, or SVPA, that detains convicted sex offenders.

Bury said he is now ready to go public with his concerns following NJ Advance Media’s investigative report, “Shadow prison,” published in May that detailed numerous allegations of problems within New Jersey’s Special Treatment Unit for civilly committed sex offenders.

The retired judge said he’s calling for major reforms to what he sees as a system in crisis.

“My parents always taught me to be truthful and to do the right thing,” he said. “The SVPA docket is a mess and in terrible distress. Trying to fix it is worth my effort.”

And Bury has a stunning assessment of the program: A third of the roughly 400 civilly committed sex offenders in New Jersey could be safely released if changes are made to how the system is administered.

The state Attorney General’s office and administration at the Special Treatment Unit are unnecessarily holding some who could qualify for release and frequently try to derail court-ordered discharges, Bury alleges.

Before he retired last year, Bury sent the state Attorney General’s office a 35-page document outlining his concerns. He said he was told his allegations triggered a review, but he received no other response.

The state Attorney General’s office declined to comment to NJ Advance Media on Bury’s allegations.

But, the office released a statement saying its staff abides by the law and standards of conduct.

“Not only do the State’s attorneys in these cases adhere to the law and their professional responsibilities, but they confront these complex and often sensitive situations on a daily basis with the understanding that their actions have a direct and significant impact on the lives of New Jersey residents, their families, and their loved ones,” the Attorney General’s office statement said.

“Because of this, they take particular care to perform their legal duties and obligations with dignity and compassion,” the statement said.

Behind the system

New Jersey launched its civil commitment system for sex offenders in the late 1990s with creation of the Sexually Violent Predator Act. The law allowed the state to commit — or hold indefinitely — convicted sex offenders who were reaching the end of their prison terms if they were found likely to reoffend if released.

Offenders committed under the act are placed in the Special Treatment Unit, a barbed-wire-wrapped compound next door to East Jersey State Prison in the Avenel section of Woodbridge.

The state Department of Health handles treatment of detainees, while the Department of Corrections is responsible for housing and security.

Detainees receive treatment and counseling. While they aren’t considered inmates and enjoy limited freedoms, they’re locked up in the facility.

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Annual hearings before a judge are held to determine if detainees should remain locked up another year or begin their discharge process.

Bury — a Superior Court judge since 2013 and a former assistant prosecutor in Union and Morris counties — presided over the Sexually Violent Predator Act docket from January 2020 until February 2022.

He believes the law is necessary.

“Good concept, good purpose. However, it’s uneven and unfair to approximately a third of the residents in its application and its implementation,” Bury said.

He believes civilly committed sex offenders fall into three categories.

About a third of the detainees are “so psychologically damaged, often because they were victims of sexual abuse and violence themselves,” that they are not mentally capable of receiving treatment and making changes, according to Bury. They can’t be safely released.

Another third know they have mental health problems and a sexual deviancy, but “they’re just unwilling to change, no matter how much good treatment is placed in front of them,” he said. They also can’t be released.

The remaining third are trying to get better and get released, but they’re delayed by problems within New Jersey’s flawed system, Bury said.

He attributes delays to a “one-size-fits-all” approach to treatment and an overwhelming fear of criticism if a released sex offender were to commit another crime. Those attitudes have created a system that warehouses detainees worthy of release, he said.

“We can’t say as a society that we’re going to prevent all risk by letting no one out or nearly no one out,” Bury said. “There are a group of individuals who do get rehabilitated and are capable of being discharged into the community safely, with conditions and continual supervision, and living productive lives.”

Of the more than 830 people ever detained at the treatment unit since the late 1990s, more than 300 have been released.

Nearly 100 more have either died while detained or been released to hospice care.

Of the 420 men currently in the unit, eight have remained locked up under civil commitment for at least 25 years each, according to state records.

‘Ya’ll did me so dirty’

In the 2020 case in which Bury raised concerns about the psychiatrist who testified both for and against keeping a detainee locked up over the years, the judge ultimately ruled the doctor had a conflict of interest.

In fact, the doctor had testified twice on the man’s behalf and six times against him as a state expert at annual hearings, according to Bury, who declined to identify the doctor.

The doctor claimed he didn’t recall having acted as an expert for the detainee and that his name had not come up in his personal records that track potential conflicts of interest, Bury said.

The judge later ruled the detainee, based on a review of his treatment history, qualified for release after two decades in the Special Treatment Unit.

That detainee still remembers the emotions that washed over him when he got the call from his lawyer that the judge ruled in his favor.

“That brought tears to my eyes,” said the man, who asked that his name not be used as he attempts to build a new life. “It was something that touched me deeply and I still feel it today.”

Now in his 60s, he remains angry over the way he was treated by the civil commitment system.

“Those people are paid to do a job and the job is to f—ing hold you there as long as they can,” he said. “I can’t let go of the fact that ya’ll did me so dirty.”

The psychiatrist should have known he couldn’t testify against him after previously testifying in his favor, the ex-detainee said.

“He should have disqualified himself once he seen my name,” the ex-detainee said. “He can’t work both sides of the fence.”

The man served about seven years in prison on a sexual assault conviction, followed by more than 20 years in civil commitment. He was released last year, though he’s still under state supervision and wears an ankle bracelet.

In his case, it took about 2½ years from when Bury ordered his discharge planning to begin to when he was actually discharged, the man said. Some, but not all, of that delay was attributed to the pandemic.

Bury criticized the Attorney General’s unit that handles civil commitment cases for needlessly delaying releases and not working with public defenders to resolve cases. He also said it was rare for the Attorney General’s office to recommend anyone for release.

In describing his concerns about particular cases, Bury didn’t identify any detainees by name or share court documents.

Those considered for discharge spend about a year preparing for release once a judge issues the order to begin the process. Offenders begin with furloughs in which they can leave the unit, first accompanied by facility staff and later on their own.

State attorneys and officials in the Special Treatment Unit would often use that time to “sandbag,” or try to derail, an offender’s release, Bury alleged.

“The state and the STU would often actively seek to delay implementation of the discharge plan,” he said.

It’s common practice for the public defender’s office, which represents most detainees, to have to file motions in court to keep the process moving toward discharge, Bury said.

A veteran attorney working in New Jersey’s civil commitment system agreed.

“The STU is frankly passive aggressive when it comes to cases they lose,” said Joan Van Pelt, who oversaw the public defender’s unit that handles sex offender commitment cases for nearly a decade in the early 2000s before leaving in 2010 for private practice. She still handles cases as a pool attorney for the public defender and has been privately hired to represent some detainees.

She recalled a client whose discharge planning was ordered in 2018, but it took about three years before he was released.

“It took us forever because the STU just dragged their feet,” she said.

Taking a year to come up with a discharge plan is “unconscionable and unconstitutional,” Van Pelt said.

She also said the relationship between the Attorney General’s office and Special Treatment Unit can be unclear at times, with the state’s attorneys sometimes seeming to advocate for what the treatment unit wants, rather than what is appropriate under the law.

When asked about the criticism, the state Attorney General’s office released a statement that said each of the public servants involved in the civil commitment process is responsible for conducting themselves with “fairness and professionalism.”

“New Jersey law requires the State to initiate court proceedings whenever necessary to protect the public from a person who may be a sexually violent predator,” the statement said.

The court process is designed to arrive at “a fair outcome through an adversarial process” with a judge making a final decision on whether to release a detainee, the office said.

Both Van Pelt and Bury also raised questions about the Special Treatment Unit’s lengthy and complex treatment system, which some detainees claimed is mentally abusive. Some said they dropped out of the facility’s advanced treatment program — called the therapeutic community — because they couldn’t handle the emotional strain.

In response to criticism about treatment practices, a state Department of Health spokeswoman said treatment is individualized, based on resident need and provided in a variety of forms.

“The Special Treatment Unit has an extensive discharge planning process where staff collaborate with the resident to create a discharge plan to manage their individual risk needs and provide the tools to succeed in the community,” the spokeswoman said.

‘Arrogance and apathy’

Days before he retired last year, Bury sent Attorney General Matthew Platkin and Michael Long, the director of the Attorney General’s Division of Law, his 35-page document with 45 exhibits outlining concerns about how the office handles sex offender commitment cases.

Bury cited ethics and competency issues, referencing specific examples from multiple cases. The judge recommended firing two deputy attorneys and corrective actions for a third office member.

“It’s about arrogance and apathy,” Bury said. “It’s about a lack of competence and a lack of intellectual integrity.”

The Attorney General’s office declined to comment on Bury’s document or say if actions were taken as a result of the judge’s allegations.

In another case that raised ethical concerns, Bury said the state sought to recommit a sex offender living in a nursing home.

The disabled ex-detainee allegedly had consensual sexual contact with another nursing home resident and attempted unsuccessfully to view child porn on a fellow nursing home resident’s phone, Bury said.

The state argued the ex-detainee, then in his 60s and using a walker, posed a threat to the community and to children.

“The case was so weak,” said Bury, who granted the defense’s motion to dismiss the matter.

He was shocked by what happened next.

The Attorney General’s office appealed his decision, misrepresenting details of the case from the court record and inaccurately claiming the ex-detainee had access to children in the nursing home, Bury alleged.

The public defender on that case filed a response to the court saying she was astonished by the document filed by the state’s attorney.

“In counsel’s thirty-seven years of practicing law in New Jersey, I have never seen an adversary misrepresent a trial record in such a blatant fashion as the State does here,” she wrote.

The state later withdrew the appeal, Bury said.

In another case, Bury raised concerns about how the state handled one of the few female sex offenders facing civil commitment. Another judge granted the state’s request to temporarily hold the 19-year-old pending her commitment hearing.

Because the Special Treatment Unit is all-male, the state kept her at Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in Hunterdon County for 14 months in what amounted to solitary confinement while she awaited the hearing to determine if she would be committed, Bury said. She was held separately from prisoners because she was not an inmate.

To receive sex offender treatment, she was handcuffed and transported an hour away to the Special Treatment Unit, before a plan was made to send someone to her in what amounted to a spotty treatment process, Bury said.

The parties involved should have worked together to find a better housing and treatment solution that didn’t involve the troubled Edna Mahan facility, according to Bury.

“They just didn’t care,” Bury said. “You can’t get the Department of Corrections, Department of Health, the STU, the Attorney General’s office to all come together in unison and say, ‘We have to find a solution to where this young person can be temporarily housed and treated. And then what happens if the judge makes the decision and says she should be committed?’”

Bury eventually ruled she should be released after finding she was unlikely to reoffend.

Since her release, she has not reoffended and is starting college, Bury said, adding that she would still be detained if the state had its way.

“They would have destroyed this woman’s life,” he said.

In response to questions about the woman’s case, the Department of Corrections said it must keep any civilly committed women separate from men housed at the treatment unit. They must also be kept separate from prison inmates at Edna Mahan, which is slated to close following several unrelated scandals.

“Residents are not placed in isolated confinement but are required under the law to be separated from the incarcerated population. It’s important to note that residents are entitled to ample visitation, programmatic and treatment services, underscoring our commitment to their well-being,” Department of Corrections spokesman Daniel J. Sperrazza said in a statement.

While no female sex offenders are currently civilly committed, there are plans in place for their treatment and safety, Sperrazza added.

‘Rubber-stamping’ rulings

Since Bury’s retirement, the state has changed how it handles civil commitment hearings for the worse, he said.

When Bury handled the docket, he heard cases Monday through Thursday and a rotation of judges handled Friday hearings.

Hearings were held in a trailer on the treatment unit grounds before switching to a virtual format at the start of the pandemic.

Under the new system, the state judiciary rotates hearings among different court vicinages, with a different set of judges around the state handling the cases each month. The hearings are usually held via video.

The new system means judges never get a chance to develop a thorough understanding of the complex civil commitment system and the unique issues facing offenders in the treatment unit, Bury said. It also doesn’t allow judges to become familiar with detainees or their lawyers.

That gives the state an upper hand when it argues sex offenders should be kept locked up, he said.

“The rotational system breeds rubber-stamping of the Attorney General’s request to continue to commit or recommit,” Bury said.

He believes the system in place before his tenure, with two recalled retired judges handling nearly all the cases, was a better model.

“They were not only familiar with the subject matter, they became very familiar with regard to the litigants and the lawyers,” he said. “They just became more proficient with regard to administering justice. And then you’re going to get more equitable results.”

Video hearings for such weighty matters are also a mistake, Bury said. He argues determining the credibility of a witness is difficult via video and detainees should get in-person hearings before a judge makes “life-impacting decisions.”

A change to the system came in January, when the state began holding all initial commitment hearings in person in courtrooms in Middlesex County.

State Judiciary spokesman Peter McAleer said the annual review hearings for detainees still shift to different vicinages each month and are typically held via video because of the difficulty in scheduling expert witnesses. Judges are trained and provided with resources to prepare them for these cases, he added.

However, as of last month, any requests to hold annual review hearings in-person are now automatically granted, judiciary officials said.

In addition to this change, the judiciary has “advocated” for the Department of Corrections to provide court space at the treatment unit “that would allow for in-person annual review hearings,” McAleer said.

Sperrazza, the Department of Corrections spokesman, said it has received the judiciary’s request to replace the existing structure previously used for those sessions.

Van Pelt, who oversaw the public defender’s unit that handles sex offender commitment cases for nearly a decade, said she also sees problems with the current system of rotating judges.

“You’re not going to get the nuances,” she said of the rotating judges. “You don’t know who the players are. You don’t really know who has a history of being credible or exaggerating. It takes a while to get to know the witnesses.”

For example, in May she said she tried a case in which the judge was impressed with a detainee’s progress in treatment and said he would like to see more information. The man was given an accelerated hearing in seven months, instead of a year, to determine whether he could move toward release.

“The only problem is when we go back in December, we will most likely have a different judge who may or may not know the reason for the seven-month review,” Van Pelt said.

Superior Court Judge Harvey Weissbard sat on the appellate court for eight years and reviewed many appeals to civil commitment orders before his retirement in 2008. He also believes rotating judges to hear the cases is a mistake because of the complexity of the civil commitment cases.

“It’s a highly specialized area,” he said. The cases have detailed psychiatric reports and their own terminology.

The judges hearing cases today aren’t specialists, he said, but that message doesn’t seem to have made it to the appellate court.

He cited an appellate court decision early this year regarding a civil commitment case that stated judges hearing civil commitment cases “generally are specialists and their expertise in the subject is entitled to special deference.”

“Unlike previously, the judges now are not specialists in this area,” Weissbard said.

Waiting for action

Though retired, Bury remains active in his private law practice as a mediator and arbitrator. He says he never heard from Platkin, the state attorney general, about his document outlining concerns with the office’s staff.

The former judge said he asked state officials several times for an update. He was eventually told by Long, the Attorney General’s director of the Division of Law, that an internal review was conducted based on Bury’s statements.

Bury doesn’t know if the review produced any changes, but he knows the Attorney General’s office lawyers he criticized in his document remain employed by the unit handling civil commitments.

He hopes speaking publicly gets those in power to take a closer look at how the system operates.

“I attempted to get the Attorney General’s office to fix their side of the problem, and they failed miserably,” Bury said. “Now, I hope Attorney General Platkin and the Administrative Office of the Courts and Chief Justice Rabner appreciate the magnitude of the problem and take the necessary remedial steps to dispense justice evenhandedly.”

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Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com.