Background
In June 2017, Atlantic City police responded to a fatal drug overdose and encountered Tahir S. Gregory at the scene. The ensuing investigation focused on two other women — identified in the opinion by pseudonyms Alice and Ella to protect their privacy — whom detectives believed Gregory had coerced into prostitution beginning in July 2016. Both women testified at trial that while struggling with homelessness and opiate and cocaine addictions, they had begun working for Gregory in exchange for drugs. They described a pattern of physical violence, threats, destruction or confiscation of identifying documents, and manipulation through drug dependency. Gregory posted advertisements for both women on Backpage.com using his own email address and phone number. Text messages in evidence documented his ongoing control over their commercial sex activity and his efforts to lure Ella back after she attempted to leave him.
An Atlantic County grand jury returned a superseding indictment in August 2022 charging Gregory on twelve counts, including two first-degree human trafficking counts (one for each victim), two counts of third-degree promoting prostitution, drug offenses, and multiple witness-tampering counts. The human trafficking statute, N.J.S.A. 2C:13-8, contains two distinct subsections: (a)(1), which criminalizes knowingly holding, recruiting, or transporting another person to engage in sexual activity using specified coercive means (a first-degree offense carrying a sentencing range of ten to twenty years, with no mandatory period of parole ineligibility); and (a)(2), which criminalizes receiving proceeds as an organizer, supervisor, financier, or manager of a scheme that violates (a)(1) (a far more serious offense carrying a mandatory minimum of twenty years without parole to life with twenty years of parole ineligibility). Gregory exercised his right to self-representation at trial, with standby counsel appointed under limitations. The jury convicted him of both human trafficking counts and both promoting prostitution counts, acquitting him on the witness-tampering charges. At sentencing, the court interpreted the verdict as resting on subsection (a)(2) and imposed two consecutive thirty-year terms with twenty years of parole ineligibility on the human trafficking counts.
The Court’s Holding
The Appellate Division vacated Gregory’s human trafficking convictions and remanded for a new trial on those counts, while affirming the promoting prostitution convictions and their concurrent five-year sentences. The dispositive issue was jury unanimity. Under both the United States and New Jersey Constitutions, jurors must unanimously agree on every element of a charged offense beyond a reasonable doubt. Where a statute lists in the disjunctive two separately enumerated, alternative crimes — as N.J.S.A. 2C:13-8 does with subsections (a)(1) and (a)(2) — the jury must be instructed that it must unanimously agree on which alternative grounds defendant’s guilt. The panel drew on State v. Fair, 256 N.J. 213 (2024), and State v. Gonzalez, 444 N.J. Super. 62 (App. Div. 2016), for this principle.
The structural defect here was clear. Both the indictment and the verdict sheet presented subsections (a)(1) and (a)(2) disjunctively — connected by the word or — in a single paragraph, without any instruction directing the jury to unanimously agree on which subsection it was finding violated. Compounding the problem, the trial court charged the jury only on the model instruction for (a)(1); no model charge exists for (a)(2), and no instruction was given defining the key terms of that subsection — organizer, supervisor, financier, or manager — which the court held are material elements requiring jury definition, by analogy to the Supreme Court’s ruling on the same terms in the drug-kingpin statute in State v. Alexander, 136 N.J. 563 (1994). Because it was impossible to determine whether the jury convicted under (a)(1), (a)(2), or some split between jurors, the verdicts on the human trafficking counts could not stand. The error was plain error — i.e., clearly capable of producing an unjust result — even though Gregory had not objected at trial, given that the two subsections carry radically different sentencing consequences (a potential difference between a ten-year floor and a mandatory twenty-year floor without parole).
Key Takeaways
- When a human trafficking charge is brought under N.J.S.A. 2C:13-8 and the indictment or verdict sheet combines subsections (a)(1) and (a)(2) disjunctively, the trial court must instruct the jury that it must unanimously agree on which specific subsection forms the basis of any conviction — the two subsections are distinct crimes with distinct elements and dramatically different sentencing consequences.
- The terms organizer, supervisor, financier, or manager in N.J.S.A. 2C:13-8(a)(2) are material elements that must be defined for the jury, consistent with the Supreme Court’s treatment of identical language in the drug-kingpin statute.
- Promoting prostitution convictions are unaffected by the human-trafficking instruction error and will not merge with human trafficking convictions; the panel affirmed the concurrent five-year sentences on those counts and left the door open for the State to retry the trafficking counts with correct instructions.
Why It Matters
This decision has direct consequences for prosecutors handling human trafficking indictments in New Jersey. The State’s practice of pleading both subsections of N.J.S.A. 2C:13-8 in the alternative — a logical charging strategy given the factual overlap — creates a unanimity problem at trial unless the court provides a specific unanimity instruction requiring jurors to agree on which subsection they find proven. Because no model charge for (a)(2) currently exists, trial courts and prosecutors must work together to develop an instruction that correctly defines the elements of the organizer/supervisor/manager theory before submitting that theory to the jury. Verdict sheets should clearly separate the two theories, not blend them in a single paragraph joined by or.
Defense counsel should also note that the sentencing exposure gap between (a)(1) and (a)(2) is enormous — the difference between a standard first-degree range and a mandatory minimum of twenty years without parole. Any ambiguity in which subsection the jury actually found proven is not harmless error in that context. For victims and advocates, the partial affirmance means Gregory’s promoting prostitution convictions remain intact and he is not released pending retrial on the trafficking counts; the court’s decision turns on the mechanics of the jury process, not on any finding that the evidence was insufficient to support conviction.