On May, 10, 2017, a divided New Jersey Supreme Court decided the case of Habeeb Robinson. Chief Justice Rabner authored the majority opinion. In this appeal, the Court considers the newly enacted Criminal Justice Reform Act for the first time and addresses the type...
Legal Procedures
EMTs & Official Misconduct: Part 3
In the present case, the government contracted with a non-profit entity to perform services or functions that are provided in both the public and private sectors. A uniquely governmental service or function, almost by definition, cannot be one where the private sector...
EMTs & Official Misconduct: Part 2
The New Jersey Supreme Court granted the State's motion for leave to appeal and held that a municipality's contracting for emergency medical services through a private, non-profit first-aid squad does not convert the EMTs into public servants because they are not...
EMTs & Official Misconduct: Part 1
In the case of State v. Brandon T. Morrison, decided on December 14, 2016, the New Jersey Supreme Court considered whether a volunteer emergency medical technician (EMT), working for a private, non-profit rescue squad that receives municipal funding to provide service...
Expunging Multiple Crimes: Part 3
The New Jersey Supreme Court reviewed the trial courts' applications of N.J.S.A. 2C:52-2(a) to the expungement petitions of J.S. and G.P.B. de novo. De novo review means that no deference to the lower court’s decisions on questions of law (as opposed to questions of...
Expunging Multiple Crimes: Part 2
G.P.B. is a fifty-two-year-old New Jersey resident and business owner, who, on April 19 and 20, 1999, committed several offenses in support of a scheme to offer illegal gifts to local officials in a particular municipality, in order to obtain a public contract for his...
Expunging Multiple Crimes: Part 1
The New Jersey case that addresses expungement eligibility for multiple offenses is IN THE MATTER OF THE EXPUNGEMENT PETITION OF J.S. and IN THE MATTER OF THE EXPUNGEMENT OF THE CRIMINAL RECORDS OF G.P.B. The New Jersey Supreme Court decided theses consolidated cases...
Issue Preclusion & Inconsistent Verdicts: Part 2
The issue-preclusion component of the Double Jeopardy Clause does not bar the Government from retrying defendants after a jury has returned irreconcilably inconsistent verdicts of conviction and acquittal and the convictions are later vacated for legal error unrelated...
Issue Preclusion & Inconsistent Verdicts: Part 1
On November 29, 2016, Justice Ginsburg wrote for a unanimous United State Supreme Court in the case of Juan bravo-Fernandez and Hector Martinez-Maldonado v. the United States. A jury convicted Bravo and Martínez of bribery (18 U.S.C. 666), simultaneously acquitting...
Lesser Included Offenses: Part 3
The Moorer Court continued: In N.A., we followed the lead of State v. D.V. which ruled that a "prosecutor may select between a crime of the second degree under N.J.S.A. 2C:24-4(a) and a fourth degree offense under N.J.S.A. 9:6-3" and that "the selection of the charge...