In State v. Comer, the New Jersey Supreme Court held juvenile offenders, prosecuted as adults and convicted of murder, are constitutionally entitled to reconsideration of their sentences after twenty years' imprisonment. 249 N.J. 359, 369-70 (2022). In these consolidated appeals, all three defendants were eighteen years of age or older when they were prosecuted and convicted of murder, and were sentenced to prison terms ranging from thirty years with a thirty-year parole disqualifier to life with a forty-year parole bar. Having exhausted their appeals and collateral review, defendants filed pro se applications with the motion courts for the reduction or change of sentence under Rule 3:21-10. The motion courts denied their applications on the papers, without appointing counsel.
On appeal, defendants contend, as did other similarly situated youthful offenders before them, the Court's decision in Comer should extend to youthful offenders between the ages of eighteen and twenty when they committed their offenses. Defendants therefore argue their lengthy sentences should receive the same constitutional protection as juvenile offenders prosecuted and convicted as adults. Defendants further contend the motion courts should have assigned counsel rather than denying their pro se applications without a hearing.
The court declined defendants' invitation to extend Comer's holding, concluding the Supreme Court's decision was limited to juvenile offenders tried and convicted of murder in adult court, and the Court neither explicitly nor implicitly extended this right of sentence review to offenders between the ages of eighteen and twenty. Citing its limited institutional role as an intermediate appellate court, the court expressed its obligation to follow precedential opinions of the United States Supreme Court and the New Jersey Supreme Court. Noting defendants' arguments lacked merit under Comer and were not particularly complex, the court further concluded the motion courts properly decided their applications without assignment of counsel. Accordingly, the court affirmed all three orders under review.