By the mid 1980's, the specter of illegal drugs, particularly crack cocaine, was casting a long shadow, even in the New Jersey's toniest suburbs. Over the next several years, lawmakers desperate, if not to stanch the flow, at least to stem it, passed a raft of laws designed to crack down on crack dealers and others who trafficked in narcotics.

Among the laws they adopted was one, modeled on federal legislation and similar statutes in other states which permitted prosecutors to move to use the civil courts to seize the assets — homes, cars, whatever — of drug dealers, even before the suspect in the case was convicted of trafficking in illegal drugs.

To most prosecutors, it was just one weapon in the arsenal in the war on drugs. But according to Bissell's critics, in his county, it soon became his weapon of choice. Though Somerset County was among the smallest of the state's 21 counties, ranking 13^th out of 21 in population, during Bissell's tenure, it ranked, according a 1995 report in the New York Times, near the top in terms of the value of property seized from convicted drug dealers.

In almost no time, Bissell developed a reputation as one of the most aggressive prosecutors in the state when it came to the forfeiture laws. Looking back, Wronko, then the head of the narcotics task force in Somerset County, suspects that that Bissell's reputation may have been more myth than substance, one more byproduct of his personal swaggering style. "We were aggressive in the forfeiture area," Wronko said. "But frankly I don't think we were any more aggressive than any other county prosecutors."

Whether it was based in fact or not, Bissell's reputation along with his willingness to use the law, and his love of high-profile, big-money drug cases, earned him the fear, if not the respect of many drug dealers.

As one attorney told the New York Times, "I've had clients tell me they'd sell drugs in (nearby) Middlesex County in a minute. But they won't sell in Somerset."

That might seem like the highest praise possible for any prosecutor. But it masked a more ominous sentiment. Despite Bissell's high profile and his office's prodigious income, clouds of controversy were beginning to gather around.   There were some who took issue with the fact that he hired his wife, Barbara, to a $25,000 a year clerical post, arguing that it was nepotism, and that it was typical of Bissell.

Barbara Bissell (Courier News - Bridgewater NJ)

 

Privately, defense attorneys who hadn't properly curried Bissell's favor were beginning to complain. The way they saw it, there were two classes of lawyers in Somerset County, those whom Bissell liked, and who easily won deals and plea-bargains for their clients, and those whom Bissell considered the enemy and for whom no quarter would be given. The whispers reinforced the image of Bissell, at least among some, as a power-hungry martinet. Bissell seemed to revel even in that. In a 1989 interview with the Courier News, the brash prosecutor called the slurs nothing more than an attempt by some attorneys to "hide (their) own inadequacies." "The one thing I never tried to do here was make friends," he told the newspaper. You don't make friends on this job you make enemies."

By the early 1990's he was making them by the score. The grumbling of disenchanted lawyers, along with reports about Bissell's taste for high living and his penchant for self promotion, had grown loud enough that a member of the State Association reportedly recommended that he not be appointed to a second term.

Christine Todd Whitman

 

It's unclear how much weight that recommendation really carried, but    in 1995, nearly two years after his first term had expired, Bissell was serving as a holdover, and had not been formally reappointed to the post, even though the sitting governor at the time was fellow Republican and Somerset County native Christine Todd Whitman. He was the only sitting Republican prosecutor not reappointed by Whitman.

In truth, nasty rumors and the trampled feelings of members of the defense bar were the least of Bissell's problem. By 1990, a real storm was brewing.

It began with the May 10, 1990 arrest of a Union township man on charges that he sold a comparatively small amount of cocaine, $700 worth to be exact.