COURT ORDERS STATE'S DOCUMENTS ON SLAYING

Author: Andrew Maykuth, Inquirer Staff Writer

A Camden County Superior Court judge yesterday ordered state prosecutors to turn over documents about an alleged cover-up in a Camden County murder investigation to defense attorneys. At the same time, Judge David G. Eynon denied a motion requiring an Inquirer reporter to produce them.

Acting on a motion by Raymond M. Brown, defense lawyer for Mimi Rohrer, who is accused of killing her 2 1/2-year-old adopted son in 1975, Judge Eynon ruled that the reporter's information was protected by the New Jersey shield law.

At a hearing in Camden yesterday, Eynon also quashed additional subpoenas against the reporter, James Asher, that had sought various notes and documents.

Eynon told Brown to request "the documents you have not been given" by the state in the normal process of pre-trial discovery. If the state objects to turning over the records, Eynon said, he will review them in a special proceding to determine whether the defense should have them.

Lawyers for the state Division of Criminal Justice have 10 days to comply with the order.

The Inquirer article, published Feb. 23, quoted an internal memorandum that outlined the opening of an investigation into an alleged cover-up by the Camden County Prosecutor's Office of the death. Various other state records were cited. Mrs. Rohrer, the wife of Haddon Township Mayor William G. Rohrer, was indicted in December 1982 for the murder. In 1975, after a four-month investigation, the Camden County Prosecutor's Office ruled that the death was accidental.

The state's new inquiry into a possible cover-up has been suspended pending the completion of Mrs. Rohrer's trial in September, the article said.