States Newsroom, Inc. v. City of Jersey City, ___N.J. ___ (2025). A Jersey City police lieutenant fired a shotgun at his girlfriend and her son. Charged with terroristic threats and a weapons charge, he pled guilty to a lesser offense. The police’s Internal Affairs (“IA”) Department investigated and issued a report that found misconduct and imposed a 90-day suspension. That report contained verbatim quotes from the records of the State Police, which had investigated the shooting, and the County Prosecutor’s Office that brought the charge.
Plaintiff, a news organization, sought a copy of the IA report under the common law right of access. The City of Jersey City’s Police Department (“JCPD”) resisted production of the IA report, and plaintiff brought suit. While that case was pending, the lieutenant got the conviction expunged in Sussex County Superior Court. The Law Division denied access and ordered permanent sealing of the entire docket. The Appellate Division reversed. Today, in a unanimous opinion by Justice Wainer Apter, the Supreme Court affirmed that ruling as modified.
The case centered on the proper interpretation of the expungement statute, N.J.S.A. 2C:52-1 et seq. Thus, Justice Wainer Apter applied de novo review to the issues presented. That statute defines what records are expunged upon entry of an expungement order. Those include “records . . . concerning a person’s detection, apprehension, arrest, detention, trial or disposition of an offense within the criminal justice system,” and “complaints, warrants, arrests, commitments, processing records, fingerprints, photographs, index cards, ‘rap sheets’ and judicial docket records.” N.J.S.A. 2C:52-1(a), (b). IA reports do not fall within those categories, or within other portions relied on by defendant. Thus, the expungement statute did not expunge the IA report.
But that did not resolve the question of the overall effect of the expungement statute, as Justice Wainer Apter went on to explain. “N.J.S.A. 2C:52-15 and -30 require the JCPD to (1) remove all criminal records specified in the August 30, 2022 expungement order from its files; (2) ‘ensure that such records or the information contained therein’ about the expunged arrest, conviction, or related proceedings are not ‘released for any reason and are not utilized or referred to for any purpose’; (3) reply that there is ‘no record information’ in response to a request ‘for information or records’ about an expunged ‘arrest, conviction, or related proceedings’; and (4) refrain from revealing ‘the existence’ of the expunged arrest, conviction, or related legal proceeding.”
The Sussex County expungement order called for the same result. “Although that order did not expunge the JCPD IA report, it did expunge any records the JCPD possesses related to the lieutenant’s ‘arrest/conviction/adjudication/disposition,’ and it prohibits the JCPD from disclosing any information about same.” Still, despite the statute and the order, the JCPD could reveal “information about the underlying incident that led to both the lieutenant’s arrest and its IA investigation. And it need not refrain from revealing information about its IA investigation into whether JCPD rules or regulations were violated.”
Ultimately, the Court “remand[ed] to the trial court to redact any information included in the IA report concerning the lieutenant’s arrest, charges, conviction, and disposition. Once that information has been redacted, the trial court must conduct the common law balancing test on the remainder of the report, weighing whether ‘interests that favor disclosure outweigh concerns for confidentiality’ in the already-redacted report. Rivera [v. Union Cnty. Prosecutors’ Off.], 250 N.J. [124,] 135 (2022), If the court concludes that they do, it must then redact any additional information required by Rivera and release the report to plaintiff.”
