Background
Jamie Pandure, now sixty-one years old, has been incarcerated since 1994 following his 1998 conviction for conspiracy to commit murder and criminal complicity in the 1991 killing of his wife, Wanda. He is serving a seventy-five-year term with a thirty-year parole ineligibility period and became eligible for parole on April 12, 2024. Pandure’s parole assessment was substantial: he had been infraction-free for eighteen years after minor disciplinary violations in 2004 and 2006; had earned an MBA and post-graduate business diploma while imprisoned; completed multiple rehabilitative programs including “Focus on the Victim” and cognitive behavioral programs; and had serious health conditions including heart surgery, hip problems, and hearing impairment. A comprehensive 2023 mental health evaluation by Dr. Nakia Perry-Goffney, PsyD, scored him as “low risk” for recidivism on the LSI-R (20% probability of re-arrest within two years), found no acute psychiatric symptoms, and opined he had a “good” likelihood of completing parole. The doctor concluded his crime was “driven by greed” but rated him low probability of reoffending, noting his age, stable affect, and lack of prior criminal history.
At a May 2024 hearing before a full Board panel, the inquiry focused intensely on the nature of the offense and Pandure’s account of his role. Pandure maintained throughout that he and his brother Joel had a conversation about Wanda, that Joel offered to “take care of” the situation, and that Pandure bore responsibility for failing to stop his brother. He denied directly procuring the murder with payment, consistent with his jury’s failure to reach a unanimous verdict on that charge. The panel became visibly frustrated, with one member accusing Pandure of lying throughout the hearing and asserting he believed himself wrongfully incarcerated. The panel denied parole, citing the facts and circumstances of the offense, institutional infractions, and “insufficient problem resolution.” The Board’s written decision found Pandure demonstrated a pattern of manipulating facts, showed no remorse or empathy, and could not articulate what he actually did. The Board affirmed the denial in October 2024, imposing a thirty-six-month future eligibility term.
The Court’s Holding
The Appellate Division reversed and remanded for a new hearing, finding the Board’s determination was arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable because it failed to meaningfully consider the totality of the relevant statutory factors required under N.J.A.C. 10A:71-3.11(b). Because Pandure’s offense predates August 18, 1997, the applicable standard under the pre-amendment Parole Act of 1979 requires denial only upon a preponderance of evidence demonstrating a “substantial likelihood” of reoffending — a standard more demanding than mere possibility or potential. The court found the Board correctly identified the applicable legal standard but failed to apply it properly across the record as a whole.
The panel and the Board, the court concluded, ignored a substantial volume of mitigating evidence. Pandure’s statements at the hearing and in written submissions were, in fact, “replete with his unequivocal expressions of remorse, regret, and of ‘full responsibility’ for bringing about Wanda’s death” — yet neither the panel nor the Board acknowledged this or attempted to reconcile it with their finding that he showed “no responsibility” for his actions. The court was particularly troubled by the Board’s treatment of Dr. Perry-Goffney’s evaluation. The detailed mental health assessment specifically rated Pandure as low risk even while noting he had not fully admitted his role, and the Board never engaged with this finding or explained why it rejected the professional risk assessment in favor of its own conclusions. The Board’s silence on the expert evaluation — and on Pandure’s two decades of infraction-free conduct, advancing age, poor health, and viable parole plan — rendered the decision constitutionally and legally deficient. The court also cautioned, citing Berta v. N.J. State Parole Bd., 473 N.J. Super. 284 (App. Div. 2022), that an admission of guilt is not a prerequisite to parole and cannot function as a categorical bar to release.
Key Takeaways
- Under the pre-1997 Parole Act standard, the Board must base denial on a preponderance of evidence demonstrating a “substantial likelihood” of reoffending — not mere potential — and must consider and adequately explain all twenty-four regulatory factors in N.J.A.C. 10A:71-3.11(b), including mitigating evidence such as age, mental health assessments, and long-term institutional conduct.
- A parole board may not ignore or fail to reconcile a professional low-risk assessment with its own contrary finding; unexplained dismissal of expert evidence renders the agency decision arbitrary and capricious under the standard set forth in Acoli v. N.J. State Parole Bd., 250 N.J. 431 (2022).
- Consistent with Berta, refusal to admit full guilt as framed by the Board cannot serve as a de facto bar to parole; the Board must explain the nexus between any lack of insight and the actual likelihood of recidivism, rather than treating the two as self-evidently linked.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the Appellate Division’s increasingly close scrutiny of parole decisions that rely primarily on offense facts and perceived lack of remorse while discounting contrary professional evidence. Following Berta and Acoli, the court’s message is clear: parole boards must engage substantively with the full record — including mental health evaluations, risk instruments, and behavioral history — and provide reasoned explanations that connect specific factual findings to the ultimate conclusion of substantial likelihood of reoffending. A decision that sidesteps mitigating evidence or reduces the inquiry to whether an inmate has adopted the Board’s own account of his crime will not survive appellate review.
For NJ practitioners handling parole appeals, Pandure underscores the importance of building a comprehensive record that includes current professional risk assessments, detailed mitigating evidence, and documented rehabilitative achievement. It also signals that Board panels must conduct hearings in a manner reflecting genuine inquiry rather than adversarial skepticism, lest the record itself become evidence of procedural unfairness. With the case returned for a new hearing without retention of jurisdiction, the ultimate outcome remains open — but the Appellate Division has made clear what a constitutionally adequate parole determination must look like.