Alexander Shalom, partner and Chair of Lowenstein Sandler’s Center for the Public Interest, is celebrating the happy culmination of a case he has been working on since his early days as a lawyer at the ACLU-NJ—a case that marks a major milestone in the center’s ongoing efforts to bring about significant reforms to the youth justice system. On October 17, 2025, James Comer, the namesake of what are now known as Comer Hearings, was released from prison after serving 25.5 years.
In covering his release, The New York Times wrote: “Comer’s case helped end de facto life sentences for young offenders in New Jersey.”
At age 17, Comer was involved in a robbery where an individual was killed. He had no major criminal record but was tried as an adult and given a sentence of 75 years, with no chance of parole for approximately 68 years. “He was going to die in prison,” Shalom told the Times.
Shalom continued working with Comer when he left the ACLU-NJ to lead the center in 2025. Working with attorneys at the center such as Natalie J. Kraner, partner and Legal Director, as well as Lawrence S. Lustberg of Gibbons P.C., Shalom helped bring Comer’s case to the New Jersey State Supreme Court. The Court agreed that Comer’s sentence was essentially life without parole and was therefore illegal, and ordered him resentenced. The trial judge resentenced him to 30 years without parole, the mandatory minimum.
Shalom and his colleagues appealed that decision, arguing that the minimum sentence was unconstitutional when applied to children. That appeal was also successful, and in 2022, the court ruled that recipients of lengthy sentences who were under 18 may petition for resentencing after 20 years in a proceeding now called a “Comer Hearing.”
In its coverage of Comer’s release, The Times reported: “The changes prompted by Mr. Comer’s case arrived amid a wave of statewide and national legislation in the late 2010s and early 2020s, as officials rethought the criminal justice system, including bail practices and rules for prosecuting minors. Since the Comer decision, at least 41 incarcerated people have been released, or will be in the next 13 years, as a result of Comer Hearings, many having received sentence reductions, according to the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender.”
Shalom told the New Jersey Monitor that the case demonstrates the importance of second chances, especially for young people; adding: “James’ resilience and unwavering belief in positive change have forever advanced youth justice in New Jersey.”
Lowenstein has been involved for years in nationwide efforts—frequently in collaboration with the ACLU— to ensure fair reconsideration of long prison sentences imposed on those convicted as children. Recognizing that young people are developmentally and neurologically different from adults in ways that make them categorically less culpable, the firm has worked to expand opportunities for clients convicted when they were young to reduce their sentences and reenter society.
The center’s Legal Director Kraner worked for years with a youth justice coalition that successfully advocated for passage of reform bills that reduced the number of youth incarcerated in adult prisons, eliminated punitive solitary confinement in juvenile facilities, and reformed juvenile parole and sentencing schemes to address racial disparities and provide rehabilitated youth with opportunity for early release.
Some of the center’s other memorable work in this area include:
- Submitting an amicus brief on behalf of the ACLU-NJ challenging certain aspects of the juvenile sentencing scheme, resulting in a decision that helped change the plea process for youth by requiring courts to use a written plea form in all juvenile delinquency cases, informing defendants of the post-incarceration supervision period.
- Collaborating with the Rutgers Criminal and Youth Justice Clinic, the Juvenile Law Center, the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, and the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender to advocate for legislation that would eliminate the exorbitant debt that families incur when youth interact with the juvenile justice system.
- Working closely with the ACLU-NJ and Rutgers Criminal and Youth Justice Clinic to develop proposed amendments to the New Jersey Juvenile Code that
- give youth a meaningful opportunity for early release
- heighten due process in parole revocation proceedings
- drastically reduce the mandatory supervision period
- ensure that incarceration is treated as a means of last resort
- require data collection and reporting on the incarcerated youth population and what happens to them during out-of-home placements.
About Lowenstein Sandler LLP
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