New Jersey’s Supreme Court found serious errors in Andre Higgs’ first trial, but a second jury still convicted him of murdering Latrena May.
NEWARK, N.J. — A murder case once reopened by the New Jersey Supreme Court has returned to the same endpoint, with Andre Higgs sentenced again to life in prison for the 2015 shooting death of his former girlfriend, Latrena May, in East Orange.
The significance of the March 20 sentencing lies in what happened between the first life term and the second one. Higgs was originally convicted in 2017. In 2023, the state’s highest court reversed that conviction after finding multiple errors, including the denial of access to an internal affairs file for an officer who was present during the shooting. Prosecutors retried the case, secured a new guilty verdict on Dec. 23, 2025, and returned for sentencing this year. The result turns the story into more than a resentencing brief: it is also a test of whether a prosecution can survive a major appellate reset and still persuade jurors under tighter rules.
The Supreme Court’s opinion laid out the framework. The justices said the defense should have been allowed access to Detective Kemon Lee’s internal affairs records because Higgs argued Lee fired first during the confrontation. That access, the court said, could support cross-examination about prior incidents in which Lee discharged his weapon on duty, subject to normal evidence objections. The court also held that another officer’s testimony interpreting video went beyond proper lay opinion and that the state had not justified the use of Higgs’ remote convictions for impeachment. Read narrowly, the opinion was about evidence. Read more broadly, it was about whether a jury had heard a case shaped by rules that tilted too far against the defense. The answer from the court was no, and that answer erased the first conviction.
Yet when prosecutors retried the case, the central allegation did not change. They said the killing happened late on May 1, 2015 after Higgs argued with May outside her home on Tremont Avenue. As she ran from the home to escape and flagged down a police vehicle, Lee stopped and approached. At that point, prosecutors said, Higgs fired multiple shots at May. Lee returned fire and wounded Higgs in the legs. Higgs then retreated into the residence, where May’s 4-year-old daughter was asleep, and barricaded himself before police arrested him. Those facts mattered twice over in the retrial: once as the state’s account of the homicide, and again as the backdrop for the defense argument that Lee’s actions had to be examined more fully than they were in the first trial.
The second jury nevertheless convicted Higgs again of first-degree murder along with several weapons offenses. Essex County prosecutors announced that the charges included second-degree unlawful possession of a handgun, first-degree unlawful possession of a handgun by a person previously convicted of a crime under the No Early Release Act, and second-degree certain persons not to have weapons. Superior Court Judge Ronald Wigler, who handled both trial eras of the case, then imposed life on the murder count and 20 years on related weapons charges. Public summaries described the murder sentence as 75 years. Under New Jersey law, Higgs must serve 85% of that term before parole eligibility, nearly 64 years, according to prosecutors. In practical terms, the sentence means the retrial did not merely restore the conviction. It restored the punishment almost exactly.
The prosecution used the outcome to make a broader point about witness reliability and persistence. Deputy Chief Assistant Prosecutor Justin Edwab said the second conviction was possible because witnesses “once again” came forward to testify. He repeated the office’s view that Lee acted heroically when May sought his help. That language was not just ceremonial. It answered, in public terms, the very scrutiny the Supreme Court had required in legal terms. If the appellate court said Lee’s record had to be opened up to allow fairer cross-examination, prosecutors responded by retrying the case under that burden and then publicly elevating Lee’s role after the new verdict held. The office’s message was plain: the process changed, but the conclusion did not.
There is also a structural lesson in how the case moved. Appellate reversals in violent-crime cases can reshape public understanding because they are often mistaken for findings that the underlying facts were wrong. This case shows something more specific. The Supreme Court did not reject the claim that Higgs killed May. It rejected the fairness of the first trial record. That distinction became visible only after the retrial, when a second jury reviewed the case and reached the same essential verdict. For legal observers, the story is partly about internal affairs files, cross-examination and evidence rules. For everyone else, it remains about a woman killed while trying to stop a police officer for help and about how long it can take for a final judgment to survive review.
May’s identity never disappeared inside the legal complexity. Public records and coverage continued to describe her as a 27-year-old teacher at Pride Academy Charter School in East Orange. Her death was reported in 2015 as both a homicide and a communal loss, and the retrial did not change that frame. What it changed was the confidence the justice system could claim in its own procedure. By March 2026, prosecutors could say not only that they had convicted Higgs, but that they had done so again after the state’s highest court told them what the first trial got wrong. That gives the resentencing its force. It is a punishment, but also a procedural verdict on the durability of the state’s case.
For now, the case stands with a second conviction and a second life sentence in place after the March 20, 2026 hearing. The next likely milestone is another round of appellate review focused on the retrial rather than the first proceedings.
Author note: Last updated April 14, 2026.