Man in Police Standoff Gets More Jail Time, Bigger Fine

Bernardsville resident Samuel Medway, who on Sept. 21 had been sentenced to six years in state prison on a conviction of charges for selling an Uzi weapon to an undercover agent, has received additional jail time after a guilty plea in Bernardsville municipal court regarding last summer's SWAT standoff with authorities, the municipal prosecutor said.

While living on Anderson Hill Road and awaiting the resolution of the case regarding the Uzi sale, Medway was reportedly served in June with papers regarding unpaid child support. called in a county SWAT team and evacuated residents living in the vicinity.

Medway gave himself up quietly after a few hours, borough police said that night. However, as a result of that incident, Medway pled guilty in Bernardsville municipal court to obstruction of justice, said municipal Prosecutor Miles Winder. was heard on Sept. 24.

Winder said Medway received an additional 120-day jail sentence as a result of that plea, along with a small fine. On Tuesday, he said he could not recall the amount of the fine, and the court clerk declined to give the amount.

However, Winder said he had deliberately asked for a small fine, knowing that Medway was in arrears in child support payments. He said his reasoning was that any amount that the state collected in fines would likely come from funds that could be used for child support.

The 120-day jail time could be served concurrently with the six-year prison term, meaning it would be served at the same time, Winder said.

Phone calls to the public defender for Medway were not returned.

Medway had been convicted earlier this summer of charges related to possessing and selling an illegally owned Uzi weapon to an undercover agent in 2011.

On Sept. 21, Medway stood quietly during the sentencing in a Somerville courtroom, with a state public defender by his side, while state Superior Court Judge Julie M. Marino read—and rejected—his requests for reasons why the court should consider mitigating factors in setting his sentence.

Medway, 44, had been in July found guilty by a Somerset County jury of second-degree unlawful possession of an assault rifle, third-degree unlawful sale of an assault rifle, fourth-degree violation of the regulatory provisions related to firearms and fourth-degree forgery.

In her sentencing remarks, Marino particularly opposed the point of view in papers filed on Medway's behalf that selling an Uzi to an undercover agent, particularly since the weapon was accompanied by back-dated documentation to predate a state ban on automatic weapons, did not result in any violence.

"To say there was no immediate violence was to completely miss the point," Marino told Medway during the open court session.

Pointing to the use of such weapons in public forums in the past several months in a Colorado movie theater, New York and elsewhere, Marino said there is a reason for New Jersey's gun laws, which she said Medway had "flouted."

She said the sale of the weapon—which Medway was not authorized to possess—to the sale of an agent who did not show any documentation that he was legally entitled to own a gun—"opens the door to heavens knows what."

Medway previously had lived in Basking Ridge before moving to Bernardsville about two years ago, according to the judge's comments in Superior Court.