Former Bordentown Township Police Chief Frank Nucera Jr. may get his pension after a state appeals court ruled it was incorrectly revoked

A former South Jersey police chief convicted of lying to the FBI about striking a handcuffed Black teen suspect may receive his pension after a New Jersey appeals court ruled that prosecutors had wrongly revoked it.

Frank Nucera Jr., the former longtime Bordentown Township police chief, waged a legal battle to retain the pension accrued during his 34-year career as the top law enforcement officer in the 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 speaking about joining a firing squad to mow down Black people and comparing them to ISIS.

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

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

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

The appeals court said “the crime for which defendant was convicted does not mandate forfeiture of benefits.”

» READ MORE: Jury finds former N.J. police chief guilty of lying to FBI

It was unclear whether an appeal would be filed. A spokesperson 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 charged with hitting 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 not resisting when Nucera slammed the teen’s head into a metal doorjamb during a scuffle with police.

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

Authorities charged Nucera with two hate-crime assault charges, as well as 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 played profanity-laced excerpts for the jury from 81 secret recordings made by fellow officers in which Nucera could be heard using racial slurs.

Nucera was found guilty of lying to the FBI, but U.S. District Court Judge Robert Kugler twice declared a mistrial in the case after jurors deadlocked on the two more-serious civil rights charges. Prosecutors eventually decided in 2022 not to try him a third time and those charges were dismissed.

The case had been delayed partly by the pandemic and by Nucera’s health ailments. Nucera unsuccessfully appealed his conviction for lying to the FBI, arguing in part that white jurors alleged that 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 officers. Nucera was sent to a low-level security facility in Ashland, Ky.

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