UPDATE: This story was updated to reflect a verdict delivered Thursday afternoon by a jury in the criminal case.

If you believe the prosecution, former Wall Township Police dispatcher Nicholas Curcio is a felon who hacked into the township’s computer system to stalk a female coworker. Curcio and his lawyers, on the other hand, say he’s an innocent man facing trumped-up criminal charges in retaliation for his claims that he was a victim of discrimination from a department and municipal government that has been criticized as tolerating a culture of hate.

A Monmouth County jury in Freehold sided with Curcio on Thursday, at least in terms of his innocence of the criminal charges against him. After a 3-week trial in state Superior Court, it took the jury just over an hour to find Curcio not guilty on all seven counts of a 2016 indictment charging him with official misconduct, criminal impersonation and stalking, after he had sent the police chief’s assistant a series of harshly worded Facebook messages in late 2016 under an assumed name.

“I’m very happy for my client,” said Curcio’s lawyer, Edward Bertucio, of the Hamilton firm Kalavruzos Mumola Hartman & Lento.

Curcio has been suspended from his dispatcher job since being charged administratively and criminally under the former police chief, but now looks forward to resolution of his pending civil suit and a return to work, his lawyer said.

“He wants to got back to Wall,” Bertucio said. “He wants to go back with his head held high.”

Jurors began deliberating just before 2 p.m. on Thursday, and emerged with the verdict just after 3, a day after closing arguments by Bertucio and an assistant Monmouth County prosecutor.

“This isn’t an ex-girlfriend, an ex-boyfriend, an ex-husband, ex-wife, somebody who can’t let go,” Curcio’s lawyer Theodore Bertucio told jurors, running down the list of typical stalking suspects, and a particularly infamous one. “This isn’t O.J.”

“He admits sending the messages,” the assistant prosecutor, Margaret Koping, told the seven women and six men in the jury box, one of whom will serve as an alternate. Of the alleged victim, Koping said, “You don’t have to be in a relationship to be stalked.”

But Curcio and his lawyers insisted his contact with the woman was authorized by then-Chief Robert Brice in an effort to confirm her extramarital affair with a convicted felon and leader of the Pagans motorcycle gang, a relationship that would have violated a policy intended to shield the department from corruption.

‘Toxic culture of hate’ has infested town’s police and 2 lawsuits are proof, some say

The town already had a $1.25M settlement in an anti-semitism lawsuit. Now, two more lawsuits are pending.

Cursio’s lawyer again showed jurors photographs introduced earlier in the trial capturing the assistant riding with the Pagan, Richard “Boots” Badali, on his motorcycle, which had been taken by the FBI in an investigation eventually leading to his 2016 conviction on federal gun trafficking charges. The assistant no longer works for the department.

The defense insisted that the activity Curcio thought was helping the department was then used against him in retaliation for his complaints that he had been subject to a hostile work environment. Curcio, who is white, alleges in a lawsuit now pending in Superior Court that his work environment included other officers’ regular use of the N-word, racist cartoons posted for him to see, and his being called a “monkey” in reference to a darkening of the skin on his legs, a condition related to his diabetes.

Asked whether the verdict was an indication that the jury believed the charges were retaliatory, Bertucio said only that, “the verdict speaks for itself.”

A spokesman for the the prosecutor’s office declined to interpret the verdict.

“We respect the Jury’s decision,” said the spokesman, Charles Webster. “Everything else will be decided somewhere else.”

Curcio’s lawsuit is similar to one filed by a former Indian-American Wall police officer, Suresh Madhavan, that is also now pending in state court, and to a suit filed by a Jewish former township tax clerk, Brandon Jacobs, which was settled last June for $1.25 million.

Residents including Dan Fretz, a Democratic candidate who ran unsuccessfully last year for a seat on the Republican-controlled township committee, told the committee during a meeting in September that they were fed up with the “toxic” atmosphere of hate that had been allowed to persist, which Curcio’s and other lawsuits were proving to be a costly waste of taxpayer money.

Wall officials including Township Administrator Jeffrey Bertrand expressed shock and disgust with the racist cartoons, which were made public as exhibits in Curcio’s lawsuit. But Bertrand and other township officials, including Mayor Timothy Farrell — who beat Fretz by a 2-1 margin in the November election — defended the police department and said racism was not tolerated among employees of Wall Township, where 93.7 percent of its 26,162 residents were white.

Curcio’s lawyer in his civil suit, Ravi Sarriaju, had watched Wednesday’s closing arguments from the courtroom gallery. Sarriaju, who had also represented Jacobs in his discrimination suit, said he would explore several issues in Curcio’s civil suit that had arisen during the criminal trial, including Brice’s conduct.

Brice, who retired from the Wall police in 2017 and is now the borough administrator in Lavalette, rejected Curcio’s allegations after the civil suit was filed last September, when Brice said he looked forward to defending himself in court. Koping reminded jurors on Wednesday that the former chief had testified during the trial that he had never authorized Curcio to spy on the assistant.

Steve Strunsky may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

Click for Original Story (NJ.COM)