A federal judge in Newark has rejected a litigant’s due-process claims stemming from allegedly frequent absences by New Jersey state Sen. Nicholas Scutari, D-Union, during his 15-year run as municipal prosecutor in Linden.

The plaintiff claimed that Scutari was frequently absent from the prosecutor’s job, and that his absence triggered a series of procedural missteps that left her languishing in jail for 18 days on a harassment charge that was later dismissed.