JOHN WATSON VS. NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY
A-5627-15T4
Plaintiff appealed the dismissal of his complaint under N.J.S.A. 52:4C-1, the Mistaken Imprisonment Act. Plaintiff was convicted in 1988 of possession of cocaine and weapons. He served five and one half years and was released from prison in 1996. In April 1999, the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General issued a report acknowledging the State Police's use of racial profiling on the Turnpike from 1988 to 1999 and in 2000, agreed to vacate convictions and dismiss charges for certain cases.
In November 2011, plaintiff was convicted in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania for another narcotics offense and sentenced to thirty years. The federal court used plaintiff's New Jersey convictions to enhance his federal sentence because he qualified as a three-strike "career offender".
On May 2, 2014, the New Jersey court consented to order vacating defendant's 1988 New Jersey conviction because it was subject to inclusion in the aforementioned State Police racial profiling consent order. In light of the vacated conviction, the federal court resentenced plaintiff to a shorter term as he no longer qualified as a "career offender." Plaintiff filed suit under the Act on April 27, 2016.
The trial judge dismissed plaintiff's complaint. The panel affirmed the dismissal of plaintiff's complaint because the plain language of N.J.S.A. 52:4C-4 identifies two triggering events from
which to calculate the two-year statute of limitations: release from imprisonment or a pardon. Because plaintiff's complaint was filed beyond the two years after his release from prison in New Jersey and the vacatur of his conviction was not a pardon, his complaint was not timely filed.
