Hudson County Criminal Lawyer Blog
The New Jersey Supreme Court recently issued a major ruling that reshapes how courts and prosecutors must apply the state’s strict Graves Act sentencing rules for gun offenses. In State v. Zaire J. Cromedy (decided August 5, 2025), the Court unanimously held that a conviction under N.J.S.A. 2C:39-5(j), which makes it a first-degree crime for someone with a prior No Early Release Act (NERA) conviction to unlawfully possess a weapon, is not automatically subject to the Graves Act’s mandatory parole-ineligibility period.
The case began when police arrested Zaire Cromedy in 2021 and found a handgun in his possession. Because Cromedy had a prior reckless manslaughter conviction covered by NERA, prosecutors charged him under subsection (j) of the unlawful possession statute. He pled guilty to first-degree unlawful possession of a weapon, and the trial court imposed a ten-year sentence with five years of parole ineligibility under the Graves Act. The Appellate Division affirmed, reasoning that subsection (j) simply upgraded the degree of the underlying offense and therefore carried the same mandatory minimum sentence.
The Supreme Court disagreed. Writing for a unanimous Court, Justice Noriega explained that subsection (j) creates a separate, standalone first-degree crime rather than a sentencing enhancement. The Court emphasized that the Graves Act explicitly lists which offenses trigger mandatory minimums—namely subsections (a), (b), (c), and (f) of the weapons statute—but not subsection (j). Because the Legislature added subsection (j) in 2013 yet chose not to include it in the Graves Act at that time, the Court concluded it would be improper to read that requirement into the law. In plain terms, the justices ruled that subsection (j) carries its own penalty range of ten to twenty years in prison, but without the automatic five-year no-parole term unless the sentencing judge imposes one based on the specific facts of the case.
