diff --git a/egs/librispeech/ASR/pruned_stateless_emformer_rnnt2/emformer.py b/egs/librispeech/ASR/pruned_stateless_emformer_rnnt2/emformer.py
index 7d4702f11..318cd5094 100644
--- a/egs/librispeech/ASR/pruned_stateless_emformer_rnnt2/emformer.py
+++ b/egs/librispeech/ASR/pruned_stateless_emformer_rnnt2/emformer.py
@@ -202,6 +202,7 @@ class Emformer(EncoderInterface):
         )
         self.log_eps = math.log(1e-10)
 
+        self._has_init_state = False
         self._init_state = torch.jit.Attribute([], List[List[torch.Tensor]])
 
     def forward(
@@ -296,7 +297,7 @@ class Emformer(EncoderInterface):
           Return the initial state of each layer. NOTE: the returned
           tensors are on the given device. `len(ans) == num_emformer_layers`.
         """
-        if len(self._init_state) > 0:
+        if self._has_init_state:
             # Note(fangjun): It is OK to share the init state as it is
             # not going to be modified by the model
             return self._init_state
@@ -308,6 +309,7 @@ class Emformer(EncoderInterface):
             s = layer._init_state(batch_size=batch_size, device=device)
             ans.append(s)
 
+        self._has_init_state = True
         self._init_state = ans
 
         return ans