Background
Jamar J. Myers entered a single plea agreement resolving charges under separate indictments arising from a pharmacy homicide and a 7-Eleven robbery. He pleaded guilty to felony murder in the Pharmacies case and armed robbery in the 7-Eleven case. The agreement expressly preserved his right to appeal both a ruling admitting evidence from the 7-Eleven investigation as other-acts evidence in the Pharmacies case and the denial of his motion to suppress that evidence in the 7-Eleven case.
The New Jersey Supreme Court later held that police lacked reasonable and articulable suspicion to stop the car in which Myers was a passenger. It suppressed clothing and money seized following the stop and vacated his armed-robbery conviction. After the State dismissed the 7-Eleven indictment for insufficient evidence, Myers moved to withdraw his plea, including his felony-murder plea. The trial court denied the motion under the factors governing ordinary plea-withdrawal requests, and the Appellate Division affirmed.
The Court’s Holding
The Supreme Court unanimously reversed. It held that Rules 3:5-7(d) and 3:9-3(f), rather than the ordinary plea-withdrawal framework from State v. Slater, governed Myers’s motion. Because Myers expressly reserved the right to appeal the suppression ruling and prevailed on that appeal, the conditional-plea rule required that he receive an opportunity to withdraw his plea.
Under the particular facts, that remedy included withdrawal of the felony-murder plea. The agreement, the parties, and the plea judge repeatedly described Myers as entering one singular, global “plea.” Moreover, the suppressed clothing and money had been admitted to help identify Myers as the perpetrator in the Pharmacies case. Their suppression reduced the State’s incriminating evidence in that case and altered the parties’ bargaining positions. The Court remanded for further proceedings but declined to decide whether success on an appeal involving one indictment always permits withdrawal of every plea in a multi-indictment agreement.
Key Takeaways
- A defendant who prevails on an expressly preserved pretrial appeal is entitled under Rule 3:9-3(f) to an opportunity to withdraw the conditional plea without separately satisfying the Slater factors.
- A successful suppression appeal concerning one indictment can support withdrawal of a plea to another indictment when the parties entered one global plea and the suppressed evidence materially affected the second case.
- The holding is fact-specific and does not establish an automatic right to unwind every charge in any multi-indictment plea agreement after success on a single pretrial appeal.
Why It Matters
The decision underscores the importance of specifying exactly how a reserved appellate issue will affect each charge and indictment covered by a global plea agreement. Ambiguous references to a singular “plea,” combined with overlap in the evidence supporting multiple cases, may allow the entire agreement to be reopened after a successful appeal.
The Court referred possible revisions to New Jersey’s plea forms for further consideration and encouraged plea judges to place the parties’ intentions concerning multi-indictment conditional pleas clearly on the record.