SUPERIOR COURT OF NEW JERSE Y APPELLATE DIVISION DOCKET NO . A

- 3731

- 17T2 STATE OF NEW JERSEY, Plaintiff

- Respondent,

v. LAMONT T. RICHARD SON , Defendant

- Appellant.

_______ _______________________

Argued September 17, 2019

- Decided Before Judges Fisher, Accurso and Gilson. On appeal from the Superior Cour t of New Jersey, Law Division, Mercer County, Indictment No. 10

- 03

- 0271.
Peter T homas Blum , Assistant Deputy Public Defender, argued the cause for appellant ( Joseph E. Krakora, Public Def ender, attorney; Peter T homas 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 PUBLICAT ION 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 lim ited. R. 1:36

- 3.

December 16, 20192 A

- 3731

- 17T2

PER CURIAM
I n 2015 , this court affirmed defendant Lamont T. Richardson's conviction for fir st

- degree murder and other offenses but remanded for
resentenc ing. 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 an d 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 o n a sentencing calendar and again remanded for resentencing , this time "without consideration of agg ravating 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 appeal s, raising only one issue : THE PAROLE BAR OF APPROXIMATELY

FORTY

- SEVEN Y EARS 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 IM POSING IT UPON A PERSON OF THAT AGE. U.S. CONST. AMEND

. VIII, XIV; N .J. CONST. ART. I, ¶ 12.3 A

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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 forty

seven years "would be presumptively unconstitutional as cruel and unusual punishmen t

. " 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 j uvenile when he
committed the murder

. The facts are set out at length in our prior opin ion 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 ye ar, hitting her, burning her clothes , and breaking into her apartment to vandalize her belo ngings , before strangling her to death when she finally ended their relationship for good . He then impersonated her, us ing her cell phone to invite
two ex

- boyfriends over for sex, leading one to discover her dead b ody. Such a lengthy course of planned con duct , obviously designed by
defendant to impress on the victim the consequences of rejecting him , would4 A

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- 17T2

not appear characteri stic of the impetuosi ty 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 th ose 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 treatin g 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 ).
Affir med.