The main issue in this criminal appeal is whether the trial judge erred during jury selection in denying defense counsel's requests to remove for cause two potential jurors who are police officers. The officers are employed by police departments in different municipalities from where the alleged offenses occurred, investigated, and were prosecuted, but within the same county.
The court rejects defendant's contention that because interaction with the county prosecutor's office is inherently a "necessary component of their jobs as police officers," active-duty police officers who work in the same county where the criminal charges arose must be stricken for cause from juries upon a defendant's request. Instead of applying a categorical bar, the court continues the tradition of State v. Reynolds, 124 N.J. 559, 565 (1991), in which the Supreme Court recognized the concerns about the potential bias of police-officer-jurors, but which also declined to endorse a strict policy to remove them for cause. The Court in Reynolds instructed judges "should be inclined to excuse a member of the law enforcement community" from the jury on a defendant's request, leaving it to the trial courts to perform an individualized assessment of each juror's ability to be fair and impartial. Ibid.
Extending the nuanced approach of Reynolds, the Court holds that a per se finding of cause to strike a criminal juror in law enforcement should only apply to employees of the same police department or prosecutor's office that investigated or prosecuted the charged offense. To aid trial judges and counsel, the court presents non-exhaustive factors that should be considered in evaluating, on a juror-by-juror and case-by-case basis, whether there is cause to remove a juror employed in law enforcement. If, on the whole, those factors establish cause, the trial court "shall" remove the juror, as is required under the recently reinforced language of Rule 1:8-3(b).
Applying these principles, the court affirms the trial judge's denial of defendant's request to strike for cause one of the two police officers, but finds error with respect to the other officer, based on the officers’ respective voir dire responses. However, the latter officer was never summoned to the jury box, so the error in failing to remove the juror for cause was harmless.
The unpublished portion of this opinion rejects unrelated arguments raised by defendant alleging evidentiary and sentencing errors.