After a hiatus, for Passover and other reasons, this blog is back in action and ready to cover New Jersey appellate developments in April. This month has seen only two published opinions, both in criminal appeals, from the Appellate Division so far. There have not yet been any Supreme Court opinions this month.
State v. Seddens, ___ N.J. Super. ___ (App. Div. 2026). The lengthy published opinion by Judge Sabatino in this appeal was part of a longer unpublished opinion that addressed a number of issues. The published opinion, however, addressed only the question of “the admissibility of ‘other crimes’ evidence about [the] defendant’s aggravated assault of the same victim at the same location two years earlier, when such evidence is used by the State to prove his motive and identity as the homicide perpetrator.”
As Judge Sabatino recounted, the Law Division granted the State’s pretrial motion to admit details of the previous assault under Evidence Rule 404(b). The jury was given that evidence with “repeated limiting instructions” but “without sanitization.” Ultimately, the jury convicted defendant of aggravated manslaughter, unlawful possession of a weapon, and automobile theft.
Defendant appealed, but in this published portion of its opinion, the Appellate Division rebuffed defendant’s claim that the trial judge had abused his discretion in admitting the evidence of the prior crime. After a lengthy analysis, which included an almost encyclopedic recitation of the background and case evolution of Evidence Rule 404(b) in both New Jersey and federal courts, Judge Sabatino applied the abuse of discretion standard and found no error in admitting the Rule 404(b) evidence.
Central to the Appellate Division’s analysis were the four factors of State v. Cofield, 127 N.J. 328 (1992). Those factors are “1. The evidence of the other crime must be admissible as relevant to a material issue; 2. It must be similar in kind and reasonably close in time to the offense charged; 3. The evidence of the other crime must be clear and convincing; and 4. The probative value of the evidence must not be outweighed by its apparent prejudice.” The evidence here satisfied each of those criteria, Judge Sabatino found. He noted that although Rule 404(b), unlike Evidence Rule 403, does not require the party who opposes the admission of evidence to show that the prejudice from admitting it “substantially” prejudices that party, a post-Cofield Supreme Court case stated that “our courts have not frequently excluded highly prejudicial evidence under the fourth prong of Cofield.” The panel here declined to exclude the evidence based on prejudice to defendant.
Also important were the multiple and detailed cautionary instructions that the trial judge gave to the jury in connection with the Rule 404(b) evidence. “The instructions clearly urged and reminded the jurors to consider the evidence of the [prior] assault for only the specified limited purposes and not as proof of defendant's bad character. Nothing else needed to be said.”
State v. Reynoso, ___ N.J. Super. ___ (App. Div. 2026). This appeal, in a murder case, produced a monumental, 102-page opinion by Judge Susswein. The central issue was “whether the State proved beyond a reasonable doubt the voluntariness of defendant's initial waiver of Miranda [v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 473-74 (1966)] rights and the statements he made before eventually invoking those rights.” Though this detailed and thorough opinion is well worth reading in full, the short version is that the panel “conclude[d] that the State has not met its burden of proving voluntariness beyond a reasonable doubt” due to a “combination of factors militating to various degrees against voluntariness.” The result was a reversal of the denial of his motion to suppress, vacation of the convictions, and a remand for a new trial.
