STATE OF NEW JERSEY v. WILLIAM E. HALL

NOT FOR PUBLICATION WITHOUT THE

APPROVAL OF THE APPELLATE DIVISION

SUPERIOR COURT OF NEW JERSEY

APPELLATE DIVISION

DOCKET NO. A-0

STATE OF NEW JERSEY,

Plaintiff-Respondent,

v.

WILLIAM E. HALL, a/k/a

WILLIAM EMERSON HALL, a/k/a

WILLAIM E. HALL,

Defendant-Appellant.

________________________________

March 3, 2015

Submitted November 5, 2014 Decided

Before Judges Haas and Higbee.

On appeal from the Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Camden County, Indictment No. 08-09-3042.

Joseph E. Krakora, Public Defender, attorney for appellant (Jennifer L. Gottschalk, Designated Counsel, on the brief).

Mary Eva Colalillo, Camden County Prosecutor, attorney for respondent (Jason Magid, Assistant Prosecutor, of counsel and on the brief).

PER CURIAM

Defendant, William E. Hall, appeals from a June 22, 2012, order of the Camden County Law Division, denying his petition for post-conviction relief (PCR). Defendant contends that he received ineffective assistance of counsel from his trial attorney. We disagree and affirm substantially for the reasons stated in the decision of Judge Ronald Freeman.

Defendant and his cousin, Michael A. Hall, Jr. (Hall Jr.), were charged in a Camden County indictment with first-degree robbery and multiple related offenses for robbing an electronics store. The two were also charged under a separate indictment in Gloucester County, relating to a series of similar robberies.

Pursuant to a plea agreement, defendant entered a guilty plea to second-degree robbery on March 23, 2009. On June 5, 2009, he was sentenced to nine years in prison, subject to the No Early Release Act (NERA), N.J.S.A. 2C:43-7.2. The sentence was to be served concurrently to a sentence imposed upon him as a result of the Gloucester County indictment. On September 8, 2011, defendant filed a petition for PCR, contending that his attorney provided ineffective assistance of counsel. Specifically, he argued that he received a disparate sentence compared to the sentence of Hall Jr., who had received a five-year sentence on the Camden County charges.

On June 22, 2012, Judge Freeman in an oral opinion found that defendant's petition for PCR was procedurally barred. The judge found the petition was essentially an excessive sentence claim, which should have been brought on direct appeal, and not in a PCR petition.

Nevertheless, Judge Freeman considered and rejected defendant's PCR application on the merits. Judge Freeman relied on State v. Roach, 146 N.J. 208, 230 (1995), in his analysis of the relevant law on disparate sentences. He noted that defendant received concurrent sentences of nine years for the plea in Camden County to second-degree robbery, and two concurrent nine-year terms on his plea in Gloucester County. His cousin received a five-year sentence for a plea to second-degree conspiracy in Camden County, and two concurrent ten-year terms for two counts of first-degree robbery in Gloucester County. Defendant's and Hall Jr.'s sentences were both subject to NERA.

The judge noted that the sentences could not be viewed as disparate because defendant and Hall Jr. pled guilty to two different charges of their shared indictment. In addition, Hall Jr. was sentenced as part of a plea agreement where he also agreed to plead guilty to a second unrelated indictment in Camden County, which could also have affected the plea agreement. Finally, Judge Freeman explained that when the Camden County and Gloucester County robbery sentences were viewed in the aggregate, defendant was serving less time for the robberies than Hall Jr.

On appeal, defendant raises the following points

POINT ONE - THE PCR COURT ERRED IN FINDING THAT DEFENDANT'S MOTION WAS PROCEDURALLY BARRED, AND THAT THE MERITS OF HIS APPEAL SHOULD ALSO BE DENIED.

a. Defendant's PCR claim that his sentence was improperly disparate with his codefendant's was not procedurally barred.

b. The PCR court erred in denying defendant's claim that his disparate sentence required review and modification.

We find no merit to these contentions, and find the arguments were properly addressed in Judge Freeman's opinion of June 22, 2012 and are without sufficient merit to warrant additional discussion here. R. 2:11-3(e)(2). For defendant to obtain relief based on ineffective assistance grounds, he is obliged to show not only the particular manner in which counsel's performance was deficient, but also that the deficiency prejudiced him. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 688, 687, l 04 S. Ct. 2052, 2064, 80 L. Ed. 2d 674, 693 (1984); State v. Fritz, 105 N.J. 42, 58 (1987). We are persuaded that the defendant's contentions here clearly fail to meet either the performance or prejudice prong of the Strickland test.

Affirmed.