NEWARK -- At the start of Shawn Custis's home invasion trial last month, an Essex County jury watched a "nanny-cam" video of an African-American man severely beating a woman in front of her 3-year-old daughter before fleeing their Millburn residence.
But the jurors will soon learn that after township police arrived at the scene on June 21, 2013, the video kept rolling and Millburn Detective Collin McMillan was captured uttering racial slurs about the suspect, including referring to him as a "monkey."
That revelation has pumped the issue of racism into one of New Jersey's most high-profile cases in recent years, allowing the defense to raise questions about the police investigation that led to the charges against Custis, who is African-American.
Legal experts said the video portions containing the racial epithets, as described to them by a reporter, could have a significant impact on the jury in weighing the evidence in the case and the detective's role in the investigation.
Given "the extent of racial bias in the criminal justice system," many jurors will likely be upset over McMillan's racial slurs and Custis could be acquitted, according to Rutgers-Newark law professor Louis Raveson.
"With such powerful evidence of bias, it could easily lead this jury to find the defendant not guilty, simply because everybody's fed up with the police not doing what they're supposed to do and allowing their personal and racist attitudes to infect the job that they do," Raveson said.
But former Union County Prosecutor Ted Romankow said jurors should convict Custis if they're convinced he is the attacker in the "nanny-cam" video and put aside the issue of the detective's racial bias.
"I don't think they should use that as an excuse to find the defendant not guilty," Romankow said. "Otherwise, they're rewarding the defense by saying that the police officer was prejudiced and therefore we're going to let an assailant go free."
"That would be another injustice," Romankow added.
Romankow, the former Union County prosecutor, said McMillan's racial bias alone should not affect the jury's deliberations, but jurors should consider whether that bias impugned the integrity of the evidence.
The defense could argue that, as a result of McMillan's prejudice, the evidence was not properly collected, Romankow said.
"Did he do something which would affect the evidence itself?" Romankow said. "That's what the defense is trying to show...that he's prejudiced and therefore he somehow did something to the evidence."
"Whether they can prove that is another story though," he added.
But beyond the Custis trial, incidents such as the one involving McMillan's racial slurs exacerbate tensions between police and communities of color, and validate feelings that some police officers are racially biased, according to Kami Chavis, a professor at the Wake Forest University School of Law in North Carolina.
"What we're really talking about - the heart of the issue - is we're talking about legitimacy and confidence and fairness and equity and, when you see things like this, it undermines all of that," Chavis said.
"It's becoming very difficult to ignore the role that bias plays in the criminal justice system."
Bill Wichert may be reached at bwichert@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @BillWichertNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.