State v. Otte

Amicus brief arguing that court rules do not prohibit a guilty plea before a PTI application.

This case addresses a timing issue for admission into a Pretrial Intervention program (“PTI”), which allows a person charged with certain crimes to avoid conviction if the program is successfully completed. The question is whether a defendant can apply for PTI after pleading guilty. Until 2015, a guilty plea had never been a requirement for admission into PTI, because one of the goals of PTI is to save defendants from the stigma of conviction. In 2015, the Legislature passed a statute mandating a guilty plea before admission into PTI for certain serious offenses. In this case, the defendant had entered a negotiated guilty plea to lower-level offenses and immediately asked the Court for special permission to apply for PTI. The Court granted the request but ultimately rejected the recommendation that the defendant be admitted into PTI because he had already pleaded guilty. In our brief, the ACLU-NJ argued that, while a guilty plea should not normally be required, nothing in the court rules or governing statutes prohibits a plea before PTI application. Given the primary rehabilitative purpose of PTI, there is no basis to reject a post-plea application solely on the basis of the guilty plea, so long as it is made sufficiently early in the life of the case or, if filed later, if good cause is shown.