A former New Jersey police chief already convicted of lying to the FBI is facing a retrial on hate crime charges.
Jury selection began this week in federal court in Camden in the case of Frank Nucera, the white former police chief in Bordentown, who was charged with hate crime assault and deprivation of civil rights on suspicion of slamming a handcuffed Black man’s head into a doorjamb in 2016 while two officers were escorting the man from a hotel. Nucera has denied the charges.
A jury deadlocked on those counts in 2019 but convicted Nucera of lying to the FBI. In May, a judge sentenced him to 28 months in prison, to be served once the remaining counts are resolved. Nucera has remained free on bail pending trial. He retired in 2017 during the FBI investigation.
The judge rejected Nucera's motion to have the lying conviction thrown out on what Nucera's attorney argued was a taint of anti-police bias on the jury, which was composed of nine white and three Black people.
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"The weaknesses and failings of the prosecution’s case have not changed in those two years, and we look forward to bringing those forth again to the jury, to put this difficult and stressful period in Mr. Nucera’s life to a close,” Rocco Cipparone, Nucera's attorney, wrote in an email Thursday.
