THE WOUNDS LINGER, ON BOTH SIDES

TRENTON, Jan. 14 — As they do their best to slip out of the public gaze,
James Kenna and John Hogan will be among the last in New Jersey's
racial-profiling drama to try to leave it behind.

The four young black and Latino men who were stopped and fired upon by
Troopers Kenna and Hogan one night almost four years ago are leading lives
as ordinary as possible, their lawyers say. The superintendent of the state
police at the time lost his job and has largely faded from view. The state
attorney general whose office oversaw the police at the time is working
quietly as a State Supreme Court justice, having narrowly escaped
impeachment over the issue last year.

But the lawyers carry on. In a ruling last week that allowed a class action
to proceed against state officials accused of condoning racial
discrimination by the state police, a federal district court judge noted,
"There is a vast body of racial profiling litigation ongoing in the state
of New Jersey."

"This is a cancer that just keeps growing," William Buckman, a lawyer who
worked on the first case, in which a New Jersey judge found that the police
had systematically discriminated against minorities in stops on the New
Jersey Turnpike. "It's not going to go away until the state of New Jersey
admits responsibility for the practice."

When Troopers Kenna and Hogan entered their guilty pleas this morning to
misdemeanor charges in the turnpike shootings, Jarmaine Grant, 26, and
Danny Reyes, 24, the two young men most seriously injured by the troopers,
were on a visit to Puerto Rico to see some of Mr. Reyes's relatives.

"It's all very complicated emotionally for them," said Peter Neufeld, the
lawyer who represented them in a civil suit that was settled 11 months ago
for nearly $13 million. "Remember, both still have bullets in them."

Both young men live in Manhattan, Mr. Neufeld said — Mr. Grant with his
wife and small daughter and Mr. Reyes on his own. He said Mr. Grant was so
impressed with his physical therapists that he took courses himself and
started working as a rehabilitation therapist.

The driver of the van, Keshon Moore, 26, is also a father now. His lawyer,
Linda B. Kenney, said Mr. Moore was living in Virginia and working two jobs.

The fourth victim, Rayshawn Brown, is a junior at Bloomfield College in New
Jersey. Mr. Brown, 23, is on the school's basketball team despite the
paralysis of two fingers of his right hand, and is working toward a degree
in computer science, said his lawyer, Wayne Greenfeder.

The state's settlement with the four men came just a month before a ritual
apportionment of blame in hearings before the State Senate Judiciary
Committee. The hearings culminated in demands, even from fellow
Republicans, for the impeachment of Justice Peter G. Verniero, who as
attorney general in the late 1990's received data on racial profiling but
did not acknowledge the practice until a year after the turnpike shootings.
The matter never came to a vote in the legislature, however.

Most of Mr. Verniero's subordinates also weathered disclosures that they
had turned aside evidence of racial profiling. But the state police
superintendent, Carl A. Williams, was dismissed by Gov. Christie Whitman in
February 1999 when he said in a newspaper interview that minorities were
largely to blame for drug trafficking.

Mr. Williams left public life then, although last month he appeared at a
breakfast with the Rev. Reginald T. Jackson, a leader of the campaign
against racial profiling.

Mr. Williams's successor, Col. Carson J. Dunbar Jr., also plans to leave
government, after an unremarkable but difficult tenure, when he steps down
Jan. 31.

Another career detoured was that of David Blaker, who acknowledged in State
Senate hearings that as a state police official he had seen but failed to
act on evidence of continuing racial profiling.

Mr. Blaker had been appointed acting prosecutor in Cape May County, but his
name was withdrawn after Democrats said they would question his record on
the issue. (Mr. Blaker has since been named to the State Parole Board.)

Several state officials, including Justice Verniero and Mr. Williams, are
still defendants in lawsuits. Mr. Buckman said that he continues to
represent minority defendants in criminal cases brought after stops on the
turnpike.

His first such cases went to trial in 1994, among 17 heard together in a
South Jersey courtroom before Judge Robert E. Francis of State Superior
Court. In 1996, Judge Francis, who is still on the bench in Gloucester
County, issued the ruling that found "at least a de facto policy" by
troopers of singling out minority drivers on the southern portion of the
turnpike.

The attorney general's office, led by Deborah T. Poritz and then by Mr.
Verniero, did not drop its appeal until April 1999. Last February their
successor, John J. Farmer Jr., dismissed 128 criminal cases in which
defendants sought to suppress evidence from highway searches that they said
were racially motivated. In doing so, Mr. Farmer protested that although
the defendants prevailed, "they are criminals nonetheless."

Mr. Farmer added that New Jersey officials had "subjected ourselves to
levels of scrutiny and criticism unheard of in the rest of this nation."