Former Bordentown Township Police Chief Frank Nucera Jr. May Receive Pension Following Appeals Court Ruling

A former South Jersey police chief convicted of lying to the FBI about beating a handcuffed black teenager could receive his pension after a New Jersey appeals court ruled that prosecutors had wrongly revoked it.

Frank Nucera Jr., former Bordentown Township police chief, fought a legal battle to retain pension accrued during his 34-year career as the county’s top law enforcement officer. Burlington County community just south of Trenton.

The state moved to revoke Nucera’s pension after his 2019 conviction in a federal hate crime case. Authorities said Nucera had a history of spewing racial hatred, including talking about joining a firing squad to massacre black people and comparing them to ISIS.

However, in a 34-page ruling last week, the appeals court overturned a lower court ruling that Nucera should be subjected to a mandatory forfeiture of his pension.

New Jersey law allows prosecutors to seek the loss of pension and retirement benefits of a defendant who held public office or office and was convicted of certain crimes related to the position he or she held. But the court said the state incorrectly cited state crimes it considered “similar” to the federal conviction to strip Nucera of his pension.

The federal conviction for lying to the FBI does not align with the state crimes cited by the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, official misconduct and perjury, the appeals court said. As a result, the appeals court overturned the forfeiture ruling made by a Mercer County judge.

The appeals court said that “the crime of which the defendant was convicted does not require loss of benefits.”

It was unclear whether an appeal would be filed. A spokesman for state Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin declined to comment Thursday. Nucera and his attorney could not be reached for comment.

In 2017, Nucera was accused of punching Timothy Stroye, a handcuffed black suspect, during a September 2016 arrest at a Ramada hotel in Bordentown Township. fellow officers said Stroye, then 18, was in custody and did not resist when Nucera slammed the teen’s head into a metal door frame during a struggle with police.

Nucera, 67, resigned from his dual positions as chief and city manager in 2017 after learning the FBI was investigating. His annual salary was $151,000. His annual pension of $105,992 was frozen pending the outcome of the case.

Authorities charged Nucera with two counts of hate crime assault, in addition to lying to the FBI. Experts said the case was unique because Nucera was implicated by his rank-and-file officers who broke the “blue wall of silence.” Some secretly recorded Nucera and testified against him.

During his trials, prosecutors presented jurors with profanity-laced excerpts from 81 secret recordings made by fellow officers in which Nucera could be heard using racial slurs.

Nucera was convicted of lying to the FBI, but United States District Court Judge Robert Kugler mistrial declared twice in the case after the jury deadlocked on the two most serious civil rights charges. Prosecutors ultimately decided in 2022 not to try him a third time and those charges were dismissed.

The case had been delayed in part by the pandemic and Nucera’s health problems. Nucera unsuccessfully appealed his conviction for lying to the FBI, arguing in part that white jurors alleged they were pressured by black jurors to reach a verdict and that they gave in to “white guilt.”

Kugler sentenced Nucera to 28 months in federal prison, saying he wanted to send a strong message to other law enforcement officials. Nucera was sent to a low-level security facility in Ashland, Kentucky.

He served only 13 months and was released to home confinement and electronic monitoring in 2023 after an appeals court told Kugler to reconsider the guidelines used to impose the sentence.