A former employee in a municipality’s tax assessor’s office was convicted of a federal offense touching upon his position of public employment. And based on that conviction, the state filed an action under N.J.S.A. 43:1-3.1 to compel the forfeiture of the defendant’s public pension. The defendant claimed that forfeiture of his right to a public pension violated his constitutional right to be free of excessive fines. The New Jersey Supreme Court held that the penalty was not a fine, and thus there was no reason for a constitutional analysis for excessiveness.
