State agrees: time to tear down Sal’s bridge

By JEANETTE WOLFBERG

HUDSON – Town and village Justices in New York State need not have law degrees. This year the state Senate passed a bill requiring those with “high volume case loads” to be lawyers, which the state Assembly could vote on next session. Several local justices have asked the Columbia County Board of Supervisors to adopt a resolution urging the state government to vote no. The local justices spoke at the board’s Public Safety Committee meeting August 15. The committee approved the resolution, but the full board sent the resolution back to the committee because of technicalities September 13. The committee approved a new version September 19, and the full board can vote on it October 11.

“From talking to constituents, I get that most people like that their judges are attorneys,” said Supervisor Michael Chameides (Hudson, 3rd Ward) on September 12. He went on to say, “It makes sense.”

Local justices’ decisions include “whether or not someone goes to jail, whether someone gets bail,” he said.

But Dr. Carrie O’Hare, who has been Stuyvesant Town Justice for 23 years, said on September 2 that competency matters more than credentials. Some people who also happen to be lawyers make very good justices, she said, but practicing real estate law or bankruptcy law will not train a person for criminal cases. In addition, the people who decide who will be their judge “should be the people who know” that person.

Supervisor Chameides said that most people he has talked to are surprised that you do not have to be a lawyer to be a judge. And when in 2000, the late Todd Grenci, then supervisor of Stuyvesant, asked Dr. O’Hare to be town justice she was surprised to learn she could do it without a law degree.

“All you need is common sense and a sense of fairness,” Mr. Grenci informed her. You also must be at least 21 years old and have not committed a felony. All new judges, with or without law degrees, have to undergo several weeks training by the Office of Court Administration, which is the administrative arm of the Unified Court System of New York State. In addition all judges must complete at least 12 hours of continuing education every year.

Dr. O’Hare prefers the title justice rather than judge, because — in the words of the late Chatham Justice George Dixon, who mentored her — “you don’t judge people; you dispatch justice. What kind of justice do you want your court to stand for?”

“We do whatever we can to make justice work for the people we serve,” Dr. O’Hare continued. “We care about the people we serve. We want to make the best informed decisions. Most of what we do is listening to the people in front of us.

“We don’t act in a vacuum. Our decisions affect the defendant their family and the society at large.” She says she makes decisions about each defendant on a case-by-case basis. One size does not fit all.

After being on the bench about 10 years, Dr. O’Hare tried law school “thinking it would enhance my justice responsibilities,” she said. But after four months, she decided that “the…school was missing contextual issues. My job is not simply applying the laws. I need to…listen to all sides of a case. The laws are very important, [but they] are words.” And “in my job as a judge is to recognize I am applying those words to people.”

So instead of a law degree, she got a Doctorate of Management in Organizational Leadership from the University of Phoenix in 2009, with the dissertation “Making a Difference: Judicial Stewards in the Town and Village Courts of New York State.”

Other Columbia County justices have a variety of additional occupations.

The bill that the state Senate passed requires every town and village new justice to be “an attorney admitted to practice law in this state for at least 5 years,” in the 100 towns and villages with the highest number of cases in the state for 2018 plus 2019. But several people say this law can lead to more laws extending the “must be attorney” requirement to more municipalities.

At the Public Safety Committee’s September 19 meeting, some supervisors said they are comfortable with the justices the county has now. But Supervisor Jeanne Mettler (Copake) said that though “there have been very good non-attorney judges,” the new law “doesn’t denigrate” them but “understands the gravity” of what they do.

Supervisor Tistrya Houghtling (New Lebanon) added, “We shouldn’t be in the position of admonishing state legislators. If you want to influence the state legislature, join it.”

In early America for communities that federal and state officials rarely traveled to, local leaders served as justices of the peace, with duties ranging from from performing weddings to trying criminal cases, according to an article by Matt Ford in The Atlantic, February 5, 2017. “Though not necessarily versed in the knowledge of the laws,” Mr. Ford reported Alexis de Tocqueville saying, “his office simply obliges him to execute…regulations of society; a task in which good sense and integrity are more available than legal science.”

Law schools were scarce, and a typical legal education and lawyer credentialing was to “read the law with a practicing attorney” and work as his apprentice.

Modern communications and more law schools led to professional lawyers with official credentials. The Atlantic article reports UCLA professor Stuart Banner as saying whether or not a judge should be a lawyer depends on if the judge can order someone incarcerated. If the judge can, he feels, the judge should be a lawyer.

Before becoming a justice, Dr. O’Hare said, she worked for Verizon as a manager, helped set up Verizon-aided fingerprint systems, and thereby got contact with law enforcement. In 1995, she retired with a pension at age 45 and started helping towns, villages, Emergency Medical Services and fire departments. This brought her in contact with officials like Mr Grenci.

She also taught for 18 years a Perdue University online masters level class in Decision Making.

Once on the bench, a justice is on call 24/7/365. In addition to holding regular court hours, one must be available for arraignments at any hour, even at night, in order to “make sure the defendant understands the charges and their rights.”

In arraignments, no matter what the hour, the town justice opens the court building, sets up a recording machine, makes sure an attorney arrives for the defendant, and sets a next court date. The judge can consider bail, if the charge qualifies, according to the list.

In addition, she said, one must conduct oneself within the “ethics window” specified in an ethics handbook for judges, not only professionally and when campaigning for office, but also in personal life. For example, she cannot give her opinion on some political contests, Dr. O’Hare said.

Because New York is a plea bargain state, 99% of the time the prosecution, defense, and defendant work out a plea bargain, the judge looks at it and decides whether it is acceptable, and the case never goes to trial.