SUPERIOR COURT OF NEW JERSEY

APPELLATE DIVISION

DOCKET NO. A-3731-17T2

STATE OF NEW JERSEY,

Plaintiff-Respondent,

v.

LAMONT T. RICHARDSON,

Defendant-Appellant.

______________________________

Argued September 17, 2019 - Decided 

Before Judges Fisher, Accurso and Gilson.

On appeal from the Superior Court of New Jersey, 

Law Division, Mercer County, Indictment No. 

10-03-0271.

Peter Thomas Blum, Assistant Deputy Public 

Defender, argued the cause for appellant (Joseph E. 

Krakora, Public Defender, attorney; Peter Thomas

Blum, of counsel and on the brief).

Monica Anne Martini, Assistant Prosecutor, argued 

the cause for respondent (Angelo J. Onofri, Mercer 

County Prosecutor, attorney; Monica Anne Martini, 

of counsel and on the brief).

NOT FOR PUBLICATION WITHOUT THE

APPROVAL OF THE APPELLATE DIVISION

This opinion shall not "constitute precedent or be binding upon any court." Although it is posted on the 

internet, this opinion is binding only on the parties in the case and its use in other cases is limited. R. 1:36-3.

December 16, 2019
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PER CURIAM

In 2015, this court affirmed defendant Lamont T. Richardson's

conviction for first-degree murder and other offenses but remanded for 

resentencing. State v. Richardson, No. A-1134-12 (App. Div. August 20, 

2015) (slip op. at 38). Defendant was resentenced by another judge in 2016 to 

the same sixty-year term first imposed on the murder conviction, subject to the 

periods of parole ineligibility and supervision required by the No Early 

Release Act (NERA), N.J.S.A. 2C:43-7.2.

Another panel of this court heard defendant's appeal on a sentencing 

calendar and again remanded for resentencing, this time "without consideration 

of aggravating factor one or of defendant's continuing assertion of innocence." 

The same judge re-sentenced defendant in 2017 in accordance with the second 

remand to a fifty-five-year NERA term. Defendant appeals, raising only one 

issue:

THE PAROLE BAR OF APPROXIMATELY 

FORTY-SEVEN YEARS WAS CRUEL AND 

UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT BECAUSE THE COURT 

IMPOSED IT UPON A TWENTY-ONE-YEAR OLD

OFFENDER WHILE REFUSING TO CONSIDER 

THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE THAT COUNSELED 

STRONGLY AGAINST IMPOSING IT UPON A 

PERSON OF THAT AGE. U.S. CONST. AMEND.

VIII, XIV; N.J. CONST. ART. I, ¶ 12.
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Defendant contends that had he been under eighteen when he murdered 

his ex-girlfriend, instead of over twenty-one, his parole disqualifier of fortyseven years "would be presumptively unconstitutional as cruel and unusual 

punishment." He asks, in essence, that we extend the holdings of Miller v. 

Alabama, 567 U.S. 460, 465 (2012), forbidding a mandatory life sentence 

without parole for juveniles under the age of eighteen at the time of their 

crimes and State v. Zuber, 227 N.J. 422, 446-47 (2017), which extended 

Miller's holding "to a sentence that is the practical equivalent of life without 

parole" and remand for resentencing as if he had been a juvenile when he 

committed the murder.

The facts are set out at length in our prior opinion and need not be 

repeated here. Suffice it to say, the State presented a mountain of evidence at 

defendant's trial that he tormented the victim for at least a year, hitting her,

burning her clothes, and breaking into her apartment to vandalize her 

belongings, before strangling her to death when she finally ended their 

relationship for good. He then impersonated her, using her cell phone to invite

two ex-boyfriends over for sex, leading one to discover her dead body.

Such a lengthy course of planned conduct, obviously designed by 

defendant to impress on the victim the consequences of rejecting him, would 
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not appear characteristic of the impetuosity and obliviousness to risks and 

consequences that mark children and support sentencing them differently from

adults. See Zuber, 227 N.J. at 444-45 (discussing the mitigating qualities of 

youth represented by "the Miller factors," which must be considered in 

imposing a sentence on a juvenile that is the practical equivalent of life 

without parole).

We, however, have no need to consider those facts further. Defendant 

was over twenty-one years old when he murdered his ex-girlfriend, the mother 

of his infant daughter. Leaving aside whether defendant's forty-seven-year

parole ineligibility term, which will end when defendant is sixty-eight, is the 

practical equivalent of life without parole, there is simply no legal basis for 

treating defendant as if he had been a juvenile, that is, under the age of 

eighteen, when he committed his crimes. See N.J.S.A. 2A:4A-22(a) (Code of 

Juvenile Justice definition of a juvenile as an individual under the age of

eighteen).

Affirmed.