A New Jersey judge who is under fire for going easy on an accused teen rapist — who he noted was “from a good family” — refused to talk about the case or defend his decision Wednesday.
“I cannot talk about this. I know very much about it. I know all the stories. I can’t say anything,” a testy Judge James Troiano told The Post outside his Monmouth County home.
Troiano, who arrived at the property with his wife in a black Lexus sedan, also snapped at a photographer for addressing him as “Mr. Troiano,” saying: “I am not Mr. Troiano. I am Judge Troiano.”
The judge — who is retired but has been recalled to fill in vacancies in the family division of Superior
Court in Monmouth County — was recently blasted by an appeals court for declining to try a 16-year-old accused of sexual assault as an adult while gushing about the boy’s family and grades.
The boy is accused of sexually assaulting a drunken 16-year-old girl at a party, allegedly filming the incident and then sending the clip to friends, texting: “When your first time having sex was rape.”
In declining a motion to prosecute him as an adult, Troiano noted the “young man comes from a good family who put him into an excellent school where he was doing extremely well,” according to the appeals court ruling.
He added that it wasn’t a “traditional case of rape” which he said involved “two or more generally males” holding a person at “gunpoint” or with another weapon “in an abandon[ed] house, sometimes in an abandon[ed] shed, shack.”
The appeals court last month overturned Troiano’s decision, allowing the case to be moved from family court to a grand jury, and saying the judge “sounded as if he had conducted a bench trial on the charges rather than neutrally reviewed the State’s application.”
The Monmouth County Prosecutor’s office said it is still considering its next steps.
“While we have the utmost respect for the Family Court and the judge in this case, we are grateful that the Appellate Division agreed with our assessment that this case met the legal standards for waiver to Superior Court,” Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher Gramiccioni said in a statement.
“As with all cases, we are assessing our next steps, which will include discussions with the victim and her family.”