Hudson County

State v. Payne and the Limits of Compassionate Release

Published on: January 27, 2026 | by Stephen J. Natoli

Release-300x300 New Jersey’s Compassionate Release Act is supposed to do one thing well. It exists to ensure incarceration does not become a death sentence for someone who is seriously ill, medically vulnerable, or otherwise unable to be safely housed. The New Jersey Supreme Court’s decision in State v. Celestine Payne is a reminder, though, that medical eligibility is not the end of the analysis. Even when a person meets the statute’s medical requirements and shows low public safety risk, release remains discretionary. The State can still defeat the motion if it proves extraordinary aggravating circumstances.

Payne is not a close call on facts. The opinion recounts a disturbing pattern of calculated violence tied to a broader scheme involving life-insurance fraud, manipulation of family and friends, and multiple acts of violence, including an attempted murder and two murders. The Court highlighted the planning, the use of people around her, and the brutality of what happened, including the allegation that, after one victim survived, Payne went to the hospital, posed as his mother, and signed a do-not-resuscitate order. The point was not to relitigate guilt. The point was to explain why the State argued this case fell into the narrow category of truly exceptional and rare conduct.

What made the decision legally important is the procedural posture. The trial court found Payne met the Act’s medical and public safety requirements, but still denied release based on what the Supreme Court previously recognized as an extraordinary aggravating factor. The trial court concluded the offense involved conduct that was particularly heinous, cruel, or depraved. The Appellate Division reversed, reasoning that the facts did not meaningfully exceed what courts often see in murder prosecutions. The Supreme Court disagreed and reinstated the denial.

Supreme Court Rules on Trial Court’s Probe into Juror Impropriety

Published on: January 16, 2026 | by Stephen J. Natoli

Juror-Misconduct-1-300x300 The New Jersey Supreme Court’s decision in State v. Ebenezer Byrd is about something most people don’t think about until it happens: what a judge has to do when there is a credible report that a juror may be breaking the rules in the middle of a criminal trial. At its core, the case reinforces a basic promise of the justice system – jurors must decide guilt or innocence based only on the evidence presented in court, not outside information, outside conversations, or conclusions reached before deliberations begin.

In Byrd, court staff received a call reporting “alarming” conduct by a sitting juror. The report claimed the juror had discussed the case with coworkers, shown articles to others, “Googled” the case, and had already decided she would convict, using the phrase that she was going to “burn their asses.” Even though some details were unclear and the information passed through a few people before reaching the judge, the trial court treated it as serious enough to question the juror.

The Supreme Court’s concern was that the questioning did not match the seriousness of what was alleged. The judge asked the juror general questions, including whether she had encountered “posting or newspaper articles” outside of what was presented in court, but the Supreme Court found that approach too narrow and too generic for allegations like internet research and a mind already made up. In other words, once the court decides an allegation is plausible enough to investigate, it has to ask direct, fact-specific questions aimed at the allegation itself.

Seizing Evidence During an Emergency: NJ Supreme Court Weighs In

Published on: December 12, 2025 | by Stephen J. Natoli

Seizing-Evidence-during-Fire-300x300 The New Jersey Supreme Court’s December 4, 2025 decision in State v. Caneiro is a big reminder that “exigent circumstances” is not a slogan courts apply in hindsight, but an objective, fact-sensitive test grounded in what officers reasonably knew in the moment. Here, the Court focused on whether the exigent-circumstances exception applied during an active house fire, where officers believed that getting a warrant was impracticable and immediate action was needed to prevent the destruction of evidence located in an attached garage.

The case arises from a 5:02 a.m. house fire at Paul Caneiro’s home in November 2018. While firefighters were still battling an active blaze in the main structure, police entered the attached garage and seized a security system DVR without a warrant, about forty minutes after first arrival and roughly thirty minutes after the small garage fire had been extinguished. The State alleges the DVR captured Caneiro disconnecting the security cameras before starting the fire. Later, the defendant gave valid consent to search the DVR’s contents. The trial court suppressed the DVR, stressing that the garage fire had been out for nearly thirty minutes and characterizing the officers’ retrieval as calm and deliberate. The Appellate Division affirmed.

The Supreme Court unanimously reversed, holding that under the totality of circumstances, the warrantless seizure was objectively reasonable because time was of the essence and securing a warrant was impracticable while the fire remained active and suppression efforts threatened the integrity of sensitive digital evidence. The Court looked at the whole scene, not just the garage in isolation, and rejected the idea that officers’ calm demeanor meant there was no real emergency. The question, it emphasized, is not how things look in a quiet courtroom years later, but what a reasonable officer on that chaotic scene could conclude at the time.

Immigration Consequences and Plea Advice: Clarifying Counsel’s Role in New Jersey

Published on: November 21, 2025 | by Stephen J. Natoli

Image-Law-300x300 In State v. Juan C. Hernandez-Peralta (decided July 22, 2025), the New Jersey Supreme Court answered a practical question that comes up all the time in criminal practice: how far does a defense lawyer have to go to investigate a client’s immigration status? The Court held that, on the facts of this case, sentencing counsel was not constitutionally ineffective for asking, “Are you a U.S. citizen?”, getting a clear “yes”, and relying on that answer, even though the client later turned out to be a noncitizen who faced deportation.

The underlying case started with a series of burglaries and a robbery in Lakewood in 2019. Hernandez-Peralta pled guilty to three counts of third-degree burglary and one count of second-degree robbery. At his plea hearing, he told the judge he was a U.S. citizen and said he was born in New York. On the standard New Jersey plea form, he also answered that he was a citizen. Despite that answer, his plea lawyer still went through the immigration questions and warned him that if he was not a citizen, his guilty plea could lead to removal from the United States and block him from legally re-entering.

The presentence report, however, told a slightly different story. It listed his place of birth as Mexico, noted that he came to New York as a young child. The report also left several fields blank, including “Alien Status” and “Citizenship.” At sentencing, a different public defender represented him. She had the presentence report, reviewed it with him, and asked him directly if he was a U.S. citizen. Once again, he said yes. She did not independently investigate his status, obtain immigration records, or give case-specific immigration advice. The negotiated sentence, Recovery Court probation with a backup NERA prison term, was imposed.

New Jersey Supreme Court Limits Warrantless Car Searches in State v. Fenimore

Published on: November 14, 2025 | by Stephen J. Natoli

Image-3-200x300 The New Jersey Supreme Court has continued to reinforce the strength of our State Constitution’s warrant protections in its recent decision, State v. Fenimore. The Court unanimously held that the automobile exception does not permit police to conduct a warrantless search of a vehicle once law enforcement has full control over the car, its occupants, and the surrounding environment. In Fenimore, the defendant had been arrested for DWI inside a State Police barracks, the passenger had been removed, officers had possession of the keys, and the vehicle was required to be held for a mandatory twelve-hour impound period under John’s Law. Despite these circumstances, where mobility, safety concerns, and the risk of evidence destruction were completely neutralized, the State Police searched the car in the station parking lot without obtaining a warrant.

At the suppression hearing, a crucial detail emerged: because this was a DWI arrest, John’s Law required that the car be impounded for at least twelve hours, and the trooper openly admitted the vehicle was not going anywhere. That admission gutted the State’s claim that this was the kind of mobile, rapidly unfolding situation that justifies the automobile exception. The State tried to save the search by pointing to hypothetical risks of third-party tampering and by characterizing the barracks parking lot as effectively still “on scene,” but the Supreme Court rejected the idea that speculative fears can create exigency where police already have full control over the car, its occupants, and the keys.

Relying on State v. Witt, the Court reiterated that New Jersey’s automobile exception is intentionally narrow and applies only to true on-scene situations involving spontaneous probable cause and real-time exigency. The search in Fenimore occurred in a controlled environment where any urgency had been neutralized: the driver was in custody, the passenger removed, the keys seized, and the car subject to mandatory impound. Under those facts, the Court held that the police were constitutionally required to seek judicial approval before searching. With no valid exception to the warrant requirement, the search violated the New Jersey Constitution, and the Court ordered suppression of the evidence.

Graves Act Parole Stipulations and 2C:39-5(j)

Published on: November 7, 2025 | by Stephen J. Natoli

Image-1-300x300 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.

Understanding the Limits of Fourth Amendment Protections: Abandonment and Privacy Rights

Published on: February 13, 2024 | by Stephen J. Natoli

Hudson-County-Criminal-Lawyer-Abandoned-Property-300x169 The Supreme Court of New Jersey’s decision in the case of State v. Curtis L. Gartrell presents a significant analysis of property rights and the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. In this case, the court examined the concept of abandonment in the context of a police chase, where the defendant fled and left behind a suitcase containing illegal substances. By abandoning the suitcase, Gartrell relinquished any privacy interest he had in the item, thereby negating his ability to challenge the police’s warrantless search of the suitcase.

The decision underscores a critical point for both legal professionals and the general public: the act of abandoning property, especially during a police encounter, can have profound implications on one’s constitutional rights. The court’s analysis provides a nuanced understanding of how actions taken in the heat of the moment can lead to the forfeiture of rights to privacy and the protection against unwarranted governmental intrusion.

This case is a stark reminder of the legal complexities surrounding searches and seizures, and it serves as a crucial point of discussion for those interested in criminal law and constitutional rights. It also highlights the judiciary’s role in interpreting and applying legal principles to specific factual contexts, offering valuable insights into the balance between law enforcement interests and individual rights.

Sentencing Beyond a Jury’s Verdict

Published on: October 11, 2021 | by Stephen J. Natoli

jersey-city-criminal-sentencing-judge-1 In New Jersey, a criminal defendant’s right to a jury trial is guaranteed by both the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution and the State Constitution. The principles of fairness and justice are encompassed in the roles assigned to the judge and the jury. The jury, otherwise known as the “finder of fact,” is tasked with determining what happened in a specific case and how those facts are relevant to the legal proceeding. The judge, otherwise known as the “trier of law”, is tasked with making legal rulings and ensuring that legal proceedings adhere to specific guidelines.

However, there are instances in which courtroom actors confuse the role they must play.

In State v. Melvin and State v. Padden-Battle , the Defendants were sentenced by the same judge who overlooked a jury’s acquittal and made decisions based on their own “fact-finding”.

New Jersey DWI Defenses

Published on: February 16, 2021 | by Stephen J. Natoli

In New Jersey judges and prosecutors take very seriously when an individual is charged with Driving While Intoxicated. Nonetheless, certain defenses do exist that can be beneficial to a defendant at trial or during negotiations with a prosecutor. This article explains two of those defenses.

Operation:

Often times when a client begins a consult at our law office they are totally unaware that an incredibly straightforward defense exists to their case. That defense is often times related to the most basic proof that the prosecutor bears the burden of establishing: that the Defendant actually operated and/or had the intent to operate their vehicle.