Comments from Superior Court Presiding Criminal Judge Linda G. Baxter on sentencing Fred J. Neulander:

Mr. Neulander, you were found guilty as you know by the jury on count one, murder, a crime of the first degree; count 2, felony murder, also a crime of the first degree; and count 3, conspiracy to commit murder, a second-degree crime.

You had a fair trial and a fair and impartial jury duly selected convicted you of the murder of Carol Neulander, your wife. It is now time and it is now my responsibility to sentence you for that crime.

You met Carol Lidz, as she was then known, when she was in her junior year at Mount Holyoke College, one of the finest women's colleges in the nation. She graduated with a degree in sociology in 1964 and married you in 1965. During the nearly 29 years which followed, until her murder, she accomplished many things. She worked as a social worker with people who were visually impaired or blind and she was justly proud of that. Later with two partners she founded a cake company in 1980, which she expanded over the next 14 years until it became one of the largest independently owned pastry companies in the Delaware Valley. And as you yourself said during your allocution, up in Freehold, she was especially proud of that achievement because the success of her company was accomplished despite the fact that she had no formal training in either baking or business and she was also justifiably proud of her work with the Child Placement Review Committee which is part of the court system.

And she raised three bright and talented children. The dignity and integrity of those three children was readily apparent when they testified. Despite her successful business, her work with the Child Placement Review Committee, and her pursuit of other things she enjoyed, Carol was most proud of her three children whom she considered to be the most important accomplishments of her life.

No one knows what else Carol Neulander would have accomplished and no one knows what she would have become had you not had her murdered. But one thing we do know with absolute certainty is that she had the right to live out each and every day that was allotted to her. She had the right to see her children get married, to see Rebecca through a difficult pregnancy, to see Matthew become a doctor, to become a grandmother and enjoy her grandchildren.

In short, she had the right to grow old.

But you took that right away from her. You decided how long Carol Neulander would live and you decided when she would die.

You planned and plotted and premeditated her murder for more than six months. And that brings us to the first aggravating factor for sentencing purposes, and that is aggravating factor number one: The nature and circumstances of the offense and your role in it, including whether it was committed in an especially heinous, cruel, or depraved manner. The fact that her murder was in such a cold and calculating manner, planned and premeditated for over six months is, I find, an aggravating factor. Premeditation is not an element of murder. Murder requires only that the defendant purposely or knowingly cause the death of another person. As long as the killing is purposeful it can be accomplished on the spur of the moment with no forethought or premeditation and it is still a murder.

For example, if a person intends to rob the owner of a corner store by using a handgun but during the robbery he panics and during the robbery he shoots the store owner to death, that is still a murder even though it was not premeditated. It is still murder even though the decision to murder the store owner was made in an instant.

In contrast, you spent six months planning every detail. What is significant is you had six months from May 1994 until November 1994 in which to change your mind. Six months in which to repudiate the horrendous plans you were making, six months to regain whatever morals one would assume you once had.

This was not an impulsive decision, where the decision to commit the murder was made so quickly there was no time to reconsider or reflect. In fact, the testimony showed that each and every week you and Leonard Jenoff walked the perimeter of Temple M'Kor Shalom. You discussed with him where Carol Neulander would be killed. Would it be in the theater district of New York? Would it be at the Short Hills Mall with her sister Margaret? Would it be in Camden? You finally decided that it would be in her own home. But it had to be on a Tuesday, so that your son Matthew would be out working as an emergency medical technician and Carol would be left at home alone and defenseless.

And you planned out your own alibi meticulously as well in order to make certain that the entire choir as well as Rabbi (Gary) Mazo's confirmation class would see you.

And you discussed the murder weapon with Leonard Jenoff in great detail. Would he use a stun gun, a knife, or a blunt object? Each and every week from May 1994 to November 1994 you discussed and plotted that murder. In fact the testimony showed that on Oct. 25, 1994, when Leonard Jenoff made the first and unsuccessful attempt on Carol Neulander' s life, you came home and found her alive.

Leonard Jenoff testified that he couldn't find her purse, and therefore he didn't kill Carol. But rather than be glad Carol was still alive and rather than abort your murderous plan, you met with Leonard Jenoff the next day. You were enraged that he had not killed her. He testified that you grabbed him by the lapel of his coat with your eyes bulging and threatened to kill him if he didn't kill her the very next Tuesday. And in fact, you said there will be no more Tuesdays.

This is significant because it demonstrates the extent of the premeditation, plotting and planning and the numerous opportunities you had in which to change your mind if you had chosen to do so.

Not only that but you got into bed with Carol every night, and every day you arose with her and, by your own testimony, you called Carol on the telephone each afternoon to tell her you loved her. All the while knowing you were plotting to have her killed, conduct which is so cold and calculating as to send a shiver down the spine of any civilized person.

The plotting, the planning and the premeditation and the six months' worth of opportunity to change your mind is given extremely heavy weight for sentencing purposes. The mental culpability element for murder is that the conduct be a purposeful or knowing killing of the victim. But your particular mental culpability greatly exceeds that which is inherent as an element of the offense for which you are being sentenced.

This factor which relates to the nature and circumstance of the offense rather than to background and circumstances of the offender is entitled to and does receive the maximum possible weight because the proper weight to be given an aggravating factor is its gravity in relation to the seriousness of the offense.

Next is aggravating factor seven: The defendant committed the offense pursuant to an agreement that he either pay or be paid for the commission of the offense and the pecuniary incentive was beyond that inherent in the offense itself. In other words, you paid to have Carol Neulander killed.

Not surprisingly, the crime of murder carries the lengthiest sentence of any crime in this state. But our Legislature in giving voice to the will of the people of this state has singled out particular types of murders as deserving of enhanced and harsher penalties and has made those murders eligible for punishment by death.

Among murders eligible for the death penalty is a murder procured by payment and or promise of payment of money. The jury unanimously found you guilty of such a crime although they were not unanimously able to agree on the death penalty and under our law the court then imposes a term of imprisonment. Clearly the fact that a murder-for-hire makes a defendant death-eligible is the clearest and plainest expression that there can possibly be of the enormous weight that should be given to this particular aggravating factor.

You hired someone to kill your wife, you put a price on her death. It was worth $30,000 to you to have her killed.

All we need do is recall the chilling testimony of Leonard Jenoff to see why this particular aggravating factor is so important. He testified that he was in the spring of 1994 struggling to make a living serving subpoenas. He was a recovering alcoholic and down on his luck. When you solicited him to murder your wife, he testified that he didn't want to do it. He never killed before. In fact, he never committed any crimes before. He testified that he was scared but he testified that he really needed and wanted that $30,000 and therefore he agreed to commit the crime. Had you not paid Leonard Jenoff that money and/or promised to pay him that money, Carol Neulander would be alive today. Unless you gave him money, he and Paul Michael Daniels would never have committed such a vicious brutal murder of an innocent, unsuspecting, and helpless victim. You paid him to kill. The payment of money to take a life therefore results in killings which otherwise might not have occurred and motivates people to murder victims who they never knew and whom they would never have killed had they not been lured into such a horrific act by money being dangled in front of them. This factor is also given the maximum possible weight.

The next aggravating factor which applies is factor number nine: The need to deter you and others from committing such a crime. Although the need to deter murder is great, I give this factor only moderate to heavy weight. And that is because I have already given such great weight to the two other aggravating factors which themselves are the underpinning for a substantial part of the need to deter, that is the premeditation and the payment of money.

Therefore the need to deter you individually has already been weighed. But as to the need to deter others, the need is enormous and general deterrence is given extremely heavy weight. Therefore, blending the need for individual and general deterrence, this factor is given moderate to heavy weight.

So therefore I have found three aggravating factors apply. Aggravating factor one, aggravating factor seven, and aggravating factor nine.

That brings me to the mitigating factors. There is only one mitigating factor which I find applies and that is mitigating factor number seven: That you have no history of prior convictions and have apparently led a law-abiding life for a substantial period of time before the commission of the present offense.

You did have one charge filed against you but that was dismissed and therefore of course I do not consider it.

At the time of Carol Neulander's murder, you were 53 years old approximately. You had never been convicted of a crime. This factor is given moderate to heavy weight. The court has been urged to find the existence of mitigating factor eight, which reads as follows: The defendant's conduct was the result of circumstances unlikely to recur. Technically that is true that because of the length of even the minimum sentence for the crime of murder it is unlikely you would be able to commit another crime and therefore I find that factor exists but I give it, frankly, the lightest possible weight for the reason I have just articulated.

The sentencing range for a murder committed in 1994 is anywhere from 30 years to life in prison, of which 30 years must be served without parole. In other words, the minimum sentence is 30 years in prison, 30 years to be served without parole and the maximum sentence is life imprisonment, 30 years to be served without parole eligibility.

The court has found three aggravating factors to exist and two mitigating factors. Beginning in 1994 with State V. Roth the Supreme Court has continuously made it clear that in formulating a sentence, the focus must be not on the number of aggravating and mitigating factors but rather on the qualitative weight to be afforded each of them.

They are not interchangeable on a one-to-one basis. In weighing them qualitatively the greater weight, according to the Supreme Court in Roth and in Hodge must be on the nature and circumstances of the offense, rather than on the background and circumstances of the offender. The sentencing code requires "an inexorable focus upon the offense when formulating a sentence."

This means that your lack of a prior record and the fact that you won't have the opportunity to reoffend are not entitled to the same type of weight in mitigation as are the aggravating factors which pertain to the nature and circumstances of the offense. Accordingly I have given extremely heavy weight to aggravating factors one and seven. I have given moderate to heavy weight to aggravating factor nine. I have given moderate to heavy weight to mitigating factor seven, which is your lack of a prior record, and I have given the weight of a feather, frankly, no more than that, to mitigating factor eight.

The aggravating factors clearly preponderate substantially over the mitigating factors qualitatively and quantitatively, thereby justifying a lengthy term of imprisonment.

Mr. Neulander, please rise for the imposition of sentence.

You are hereby sentenced on count one to the maximum sentence allowable by law. You are hereby sentenced to life imprisonment in New Jersey State Prison, of which 30 years must be served before eligibility for parole.

You will pay a $100 violent crimes penalty, a $75 safe streets assessment.

Counts two and three merge for sentencing purposes. No separate sentence is imposed.

You will receive credit for the days you have spent in confinement. You will receive one day jail credit for the day of September 10, 1998, the day that you were arrested.

You then were re-incarcerated when your bail was revoked, that was on June 21 of 2000. And you of course will get credit through yesterday's date, Jan. 15, 2003, because today is the first day of your sentence. That adds another 939 days. You therefore will receive a total of 940 days of jail credit.

You are hereby advised, Mr. Neulander, that you have 45 days from today's date to appeal the sentence and judgment of conviction. You are entitled to an attorney to represent you in connection with any such sentence. If you are unable to afford counsel, an attorney will be appointed for you free of charge for that purpose.