Now there are allegations of criminal malfeasance in the prosecutor's office. Is anyone in charge here, besides a governor who employs people he does not trust?
Just when we thought the Sheridan Family tragedy couldn't get worse, the infamously flawed "investigation" has been downgraded from rank incompetence to potentially criminal.
It was already well established that the Somerset County Prosecutor's inquiry into the deaths of John and Joyce Sheridan was a model for forensic ineptitude, which is why the prosecutor Geoffrey Soriano was booted out as everyone demanded a new investigation.
But we apparently are only in the foothills here, as a veteran detective on the forensics team has filed a whistleblower lawsuit that says evidence taken from the Sheridans' Montgomery Twp. home was "improperly collected, improperly preserved, and subsequently destroyed."
Which means a member of the investigative team is alleging criminal conduct - the kind that should trigger another probe into how and why Soriano butchered the Sheridan case.
The family is understandably outraged, after fighting the official report for 19 months, and this development provides a cogent reason to hand the case over to a special prosecutor.
Some may suggest that the Attorney General step in. But that office now employs Soriano, which is a conflict of interest. And it clearly has no interest in reopening the investigation: The family's science-based petition that John Sheridan's death certificate be changed from "suicide" to "undetermined" has been ignored for five months.
Soriano, however, prejudged the case from the start: Four days after the Sheridans' deaths, he said his office was "quite confident that there exists no threat to the community," which meant he concluded it was a murder-suicide.
It didn't take long to smash that theory to pieces: The family hired famed pathologist Michael Baden to examine the bodies, and with the state's medical examiner in the lab with him, they agreed that John Sheridan's fatal wounds were caused by a knife that was never discovered at the scene.
Dead men don't hide knives.
Nevertheless, on March 27, 2015, Soriano issued a report that ruled the tragedy a murder-suicide - despite inconclusive DNA evidence and the absence of motive.
Sheridan Case: New reasons for doubt | Moran
John Sheridan's survivors were told that he acted in a paroxysm of rage that was inconsistent with his countenance as he killed his wife, before setting fire to their bedroom and stabbing himself.
Nobody believed it then - including three former governors who relied on Sheridan's counsel - and nobody believes it now.
The mystery extends to Gov. Christie, who fired Soriano on Feb. 18th "because I had lost confidence in him." This was a remarkable assessment, considering it took Christie only 45 days to place Soriano in another job - as Assistant Attorney General, and special counsel to the Division of Criminal Justice.
The governor has no faith in Soriano's ability to run the prosecutor's office in one of the most serene counties in the state, yet he allows him to handle urgent projects of "bail reform and statewide law enforcement deconfliction." This does not compute.
It's long past time to reopen the Sheridan case. Justice and common decency demand it.
Further delay indicates that someone is nervous about what a new inquiry might reveal. But the shabby foundation of the first investigation has washed away in failure and scandal and ignominy, and a grieving family has been left with nothing but doubt. One thing is clear: This can't get any more embarrassing than it is already.
More: Recent Star-Ledger editorials.
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