Borough Council appoints Gusciora as new municipal prosecutor

Gusciora’s hire marks the first time since the early 1990s that the Borough and Township will be represented by different prosecutors.

This will not be Gusciora’s first time working with the Borough. He was involved in the prosecution of four male undergraduate students who attempted to steal a parking meter outside of Ivy Club in October 2009.

He has also handled cases concerning students from Rider University in Lawrenceville, where he is currently the municipal prosecutor, and from The College of New Jersey in Ewing, where he previously served as prosecutor. He is also the municipal prosecutor for Trenton.

The lawyer has also been an assemblyman in New Jersey’s legislature since 1996, where he sponsored the recently enacted medical marijuana legislation.

In an interview with The Daily Princetonian, Gusciora said that he will take the same approach to handling incidents in Princeton as he has in the other college towns by attempting to uphold laws without punishing students excessively.

Gusciora explained that “one needs to strike a balance” between “students’ need to unwind” and having them “do it responsibly.”

“We respect the college student’s ability to have a full college experience,” he said.

In Lawrenceville and Ewing, legal incidents have been routine.

“In either town, we probably got around five problems a week,” he said, citing underage drinking, student assault, stalking and general mischief as some of the issues.

Instead of punishing student offenders as criminals, Gusciora said, there is a “way to do things creatively,” such as requiring students to perform community service.

Gusciora also suggested that if he were approaching an incident involving an eating club, he would not charge the club entity itself as a defendant, as prosecutors have done in recent years. Two years before the Charter trial, Colonial Club’s corporate entity was found guilty of serving alcohol to a minor, and each member was ordered to complete community service.

Gusciora explained that if problems arose within the eating clubs, he would aim to punish “the people within” rather than the clubs themselves.

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“We will have to be tough if things get out of hand at the eating clubs,” he said, noting that problems that spill over into the broader Borough community would be of particular concern.

Gusciora’s pending appointment has not gone without controversy. Borough Councilman David Goldfarb opposed Gusciora’s appointment because it would give an “appearance of impropriety,” since Gusciora is currently the state assemblyman representing the Borough and other nearby towns, The Princeton Packet reported.

“Appointing Mr. Gusciora as prosecutor creates the appearance that it is in exchange for something of value that he is able to deliver as a legislator,” Goldfarb told the Packet.

Council President Andrew Koontz disagreed. “David has explained his point of view to me, and, frankly, I don’t understand it,” he told the Packet.

Lozier had served as the municipal prosecutor for both the Borough and the Township before resigning to become a municipal judge in Hamilton. The Township Committee approved Christopher Koutsouris as its new prosecutor on March 8.

Gusciora said he anticipates that his time at Princeton will be no different than his time at Lawrenceville or Ewing.

“My experience is that all college students are the same,” he said. “They just have different mascots.”