Rule 3:22-5 Bar of Ground Expressly Adjudicated

If a court has already ruled on a specific legal argument, you cannot raise that same argument again in a new post-conviction case. It does not matter whether the ruling happened during your original trial, a prior appeal, or a previous post-conviction hearing. Once a court has decided the issue, that decision stands.

This rule stops people from repeatedly bringing the same arguments to different courts hoping for a different result. If you want to challenge your conviction, you need to raise new legal grounds that have not already been decided by a court.