MADISON -- At an event at Fairleigh Dickinson University on Wednesday, New Jersey Supreme Court Chief Justice Stuart Rabner told students and faculty the story about what the mobster said on a wire back in 1973.
Simone "Sam The Plumber" DeCavalcante, who later did time on extortion charges, was discussing with his cohorts "which public officials they could buy," Rabner recalled. The choices seemed endless.
"But there's one guy, this prosecutor, Byrne, that we can't buy," DeCavalcante said on the tape.
Rabner was speaking at the university's inaugural Governor Brendan T. Byrne Annual Lecture, named in honor of the 92-year-old former county prosecutor, judge and New Jersey governor, who was in attendance at the event titled, "Courage and Ethics in Government."
U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman, the keynote speaker, later recalled Byrne's tenure as a Superior Court judge, when he ruled New Jersey's former death penalty statute unconstitutional.
"The opinion was not only controversial, it was extremely unpopular in many corners," Fishman said. The decision was upheld by the state Supreme Court, and Byrne later vetoed two death penalty bills during his tenure as governor.
In a wide-ranging speech about the hard choices made by those in government, Fishman frequently referenced current tensions between police officers and the communities they serve, including his own office's recently announced consent decree with the Newark Police Department.
The program, more than a decade in the making, will allow federal officials to monitor the department after several investigations uncovered a pattern of unconstitutional practices including improper searches and stops, racial imbalance in arrests and excessive use of force.
Fishman, the state's top federal law enforcement official, said the majority of police officers performing their jobs honorably have to answer for those who betray the badge.
"This is a hard time to be a cop," he said. "It was never easy, not if you're the kind of law enforcement officer who cares. But it's even harder now. Every cop -- and there are almost 700,000 sworn officers across the country -- every one of them is viewed in some way as responsible for what every other cop does everywhere else."
S.P. Sullivan may be reached at ssullivan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter. Find NJ.com on Facebook.