On April 11, 2025, a three-judge appellate panel decided the Bergen County case of State v. Mohammad Ramadan. The principal issue under N.J.S.A. 2C:5-1 concerned whether the attempted murder indictment should be dismissed because of the prosecutor’s inconsistent instructions to the grand jury.
Judge Torregrossa-O’Connor wrote for the Appellate Division in relevant part: We granted defendant Mohammad Ramadan leave to appeal from the Law Division’s April 4, 2024 order denying his motion to dismiss count two of an indictment charging him with first-degree attempted murder, N.J.S.A. 2C:5-1, 2C:11-3. Because we determine the grand jury was provided with incorrect and misleading instructions regarding attempted murder, we reverse.
We are informed by our prior decision in Gilliam, in which we considered, albeit in the context of a petit jury instruction, the same error in providing alternative purposes for attempted murder. There we determined, even in the absence of an objection to the jury charge, the crime of murder under N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3 does not require a specific intent to kill. Purposely or knowingly committing serious bodily injury when death results is a sufficient element. In the crime of attempted murder, no death results. The jury charge before us on this appeal was subject to multiple, inconsistent interpretations by the jury. The jurors may have understood that they could reach a verdict of guilty if death was a possibility, however remote, as the result of the bodily injury inflicted on the victim. That interpretation, while logical, would have been contrary to law and prejudicial to defendant. The crime of attempted murder should be limited to attempts to cause death.
Here, even in the grand jury context and bracketed between otherwise correct statements of law, we find the same risk was present. See generally State v. Savage (2002) “The standard for assessing the soundness of a jury instruction is ‘how and in what sense, under the evidence before them, and the circumstances of the trial, would ordinary jurors understand the instructions as a whole.” The grand jury could have misunderstood the correct instructions as merely applicable to what it was incorrectly told was an alternative pathway of proving attempted murder by demonstrating an intent to cause death, when, under the law, it is the only route.
This concern is heightened by the grand jury’s requesting that the prosecutor “reread” the law of attempted murder, evidencing the possibility of confusion. The prosecutor then compounded the issue by referencing the mental state for murder, N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3, which permits the alternative mind state of purposely causing “serious bodily injury resulting in death.” Specifically, the prosecutor stated, “an act constitutes murder when the act purposefully causes death or serious bodily injury resulting in death,” erroneously adding, “so attempting to cause death or attempting to cause serious bodily injury resulting in death is obviously an attempt in this case because Ira Levine did not die.” (Emphasis added).
Although the prosecutor next instructed that the grand jury had to “find probable cause that it was defendant’s purpose to cause the death of the victim,” we are not persuaded that this cured the potential confusion caused by the prior incorrect and misleading statements. The grand jury’s questions after beginning deliberations sufficiently suggest some uncertainty remained. Cf. State v. Frisby (2002) (recognizing in a petit jury trial “if a jury affirmatively evidences ‘confusion’ by its questions that would be an important factor in determining whether” error in the jury instruction was prejudicial). We note the trial court failed to address the grand jurors’ inquiry or the prosecutor’s misleading response in reaching its conclusion that the incorrect jury instructions did not require dismissal of the count.
We are not satisfied, when considering the critical misstatements, the instructions, the nature of the grand jury’s questions, and the misleading answers provided, that, without further clarification, the grand jury possessed the capacity to reconcile the incorrect instructions with the proper instructions. Consequently, we cannot escape the inherent intolerable possibility that the instructions may have caused the jury to indict defendant for attempted murder without finding defendant possessed the requisite purpose to cause death.
Persuaded that the misstatement of law requires reversal and dismissal of the attempted murder charge, we need not reach defendant’s remaining claim that the prosecutor withheld exculpatory evidence as it pertains only to the attempted murder charge we now dismiss.
We reverse the order denying defendant’s motion to dismiss count two of the indictment. Our opinion does not preclude, if appropriate, the State’s representing this matter to another grand jury.
Even though it would probably be easier to represent the case to another grand jury, the State will likely appeal this decision to the New Jersey Supreme Court. There, the State will almost certainly cite to precedent that dismissal of an indictment is a “‘draconian remedy’” that should only be exercised on the “‘clearest and plainest ground.’”
