NOT FOR PUBLICATION WITHOUT THE APPROVAL OF THE APPELLATE DIVISION

The opinion of the court was delivered by

ROTHSTADT, J.A.D.

Defendant Allen Kelly appeals from the denial of his petition for post-conviction relief (PCR) without an evidentiary hearing. We affirm.

Defendant pled guilty to one count of first-degree murder, N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3(a)(1)(2), one count of second-degree possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, N.J.S.A. 2C:39-4(a), and one count of second-degree unlawful possession of a weapon, N.J.S.A. 2C:39-5(b), as charged in Essex County indictment 10-07-1770.1 In accordance with defendant's plea agreement, the sentencing court imposed an aggregate sentence of thirty years' imprisonment with a thirty-year parole disqualifier. Defendant did not file a direct appeal from his convictions and sentence.

The charges against defendant arose from his fatal shooting of an individual after the two engaged in an argument on the front porch of defendant's grandmother's home. As defendant testified at his plea hearing, the argument ended when he entered the home, retrieved a weapon, and went back outside where he shot the victim in the face with the intent to kill.

On March 1, 2013, defendant filed a PCR petition in which he argued his trial counsel was ineffective by "fail[ing] to obtain a psychological evaluation to determine whether defendant was able to knowingly [and] willingly take a plea offered by the State." An amended petition and brief were submitted on behalf of defendant in September 2013. In this brief, defendant raised the following additional claims:

At oral argument, the parties relied upon their written submissions. After considering those submissions, the PCR court denied defendant's petition by order dated December 13, 2013.

In a written decision, that accompanied his order, Judge Michael L. Ravin considered each of defendant's arguments and found them to be without merit as they lacked factual support. The judge considered the record of defendant's plea and found it to be "devoid of any evidence that [plea counsel] coerced him to enter a plea." Citing to the record, the judge observed that defendant and counsel discussed the possibility of a self-defense argument and found it was not viable. Also, the judge found that any claim defendant did not understand his plea was belied by the record, which included the signed plea form, defendant's responses to questions on the record regarding his understanding, and defendant confirming he was not under the influence of anything that interfered with his ability to understand, such as medications or anything else that caused his judgment to be impaired.

Finally, the judge noted that not only did the record support a finding that defendant understood the plea, but also defendant offered no medical or psychiatric support for his PCR petition that raised any issue about defendant "suffering from some psychosis which would have impaired his judgment at the time of the plea." The judge concluded that defendant failed to establish a prima facie case of ineffective assistance of counsel and, therefore, was not entitled to an evidentiary hearing or PCR.

On appeal, defendant presents the following issues for our consideration:

We are not persuaded by any of these arguments.

The standard for determining whether counsel's performance was ineffective for purposes of the Sixth Amendment was formulated in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L. Ed. 2d 674 (1984), and adopted by our Supreme Court in State v. Fritz, 105 N.J. 42 (1987). In order to prevail on a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, defendant must meet the two-prong test of establishing both that: (1) counsel's performance was deficient and he or she made errors that were so egregious that counsel was not functioning effectively as guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution; and (2) the defect in performance prejudiced defendant's rights to a fair trial such that there exists a "reasonable probability that, but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different." Strickland, supra, 466 U.S. at 687, 694, 104 S. Ct. at 2064, 2068, 80 L. Ed. 2d at 693, 698.

This two-prong analysis applies equally to convictions after a trial or after a defendant pleads guilty. See State v. O'Donnell, 435 N.J.Super. 351, 369-70 (App. Div. 2014). In the context of a PCR petition challenging a guilty plea, the first Strickland prong is satisfied when a defendant establishes a reasonable probability he or she would not have pled guilty but for counsel's errors. State v. Gaitan, 209 N.J. 339, 351 (2012). The second prong is met when a defendant establishes a reasonable probability he or she would have insisted on going to trial. Ibid. "When a defendant has entered into a plea agreement, a deficiency is prejudicial if there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's errors, the defendant would not have decided to forego the plea agreement and would have gone to trial." State v. McDonald, 211 N.J. 4, 30 (2012) (citing Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U.S. 52, 59, 106 S.Ct. 366, 370, 88 L. Ed. 2d 203, 210 (1985); State v. Nuñez-Valdéz, 200 N.J. 129, 139 (2009)).

We conclude from our review of the record that defendant failed to make a prima facie showing of ineffectiveness of trial counsel within the Strickland-Fritz test, essentially for the reasons expressed by Judge Ravin in his thorough written decision. Accordingly, the PCR court correctly concluded that an evidentiary hearing was not warranted. See State v. Preciose, 129 N.J. 452, 462-63 (1992).

To the extent we have not addressed defendant's remaining arguments, we find them to be without sufficient merit to warrant discussion in a written opinion. R. 2:11-3(e)(2). Also, as to defendant's argument about alleged confusion concerning the counts of the two indictments to which he pled guilty, we choose to withhold our review because this issue was not previously raised in his PCR petition, not argued before the PCR court, and does not involve jurisdictional or public interest concerns. State v. Robinson, 200 N.J. 1, 20 (2009); State v. Arthur, 184 N.J. 307, 327 (2005); Nieder v. Royal Indem. Ins. Co., 62 N.J. 229, 234 (1973).

Affirmed.