A New York disciplinary panel said on Monday that a state judge should be removed from office for engaging in a “racially offensive, profane” diatribe during which she invoked her judicial position, threatened to shoot Black teenagers and expressed a bias in favor of the police.
The judge, Justice Erin P. Gall of State Supreme Court in Oneida County, made the remarks to law enforcement officers after a high school graduation party she was at in July 2022 descended into verbal arguments and physical fights amid the arrival of a large number of uninvited guests, the state’s Commission on Judicial Conduct said.
The officers’ body-worn and dashboard cameras recorded Justice Gall’s comments, and she acknowledged having made them. The commission found that impropriety had “permeated” her behavior on the night in question and that her “wide array of misconduct severely undermined public confidence” in “her ability to serve as a fair and impartial judge.”
“The judge’s behavior in this case is as shocking as anything I have seen in my 40 years of judicial ethics enforcement,” Robert H. Tembeckjian, the commission’s administrator and counsel, said in a statement.
Justice Gall, a Republican, was elected to the Supreme Court in 2011. Her 14-year-term is set to expire next year. She earns $232,600 a year and, the commission said, will be suspended with pay while the state’s Court of Appeals decides her fate. She has 30 days to appeal the commission’s determination to the court. Her lawyer, Robert Julian, said she planned to do so.
“We respectfully disagree with the determination,” Mr. Julian said. While he did not dispute the comments at issue, he wrote in a filing with the commission that his client had been in a “state of fear, dismay, frustration and exhaustion” when she made them.
The events that prompted the commission’s action began late on July 1, 2022, and spilled into the early hours of the next day, the commission said. Justice Gall, 53, her husband and their three teenage children were at the graduation party, at a friend’s home in New Hartford, N.Y.
The hosts had hired a bartender for the evening and had bought a keg of beer that remained after the bartender left, the commission said. Justice Gall told commission investigators she had not consumed alcohol at the party.
Party crashers began arriving at around 11:30 p.m., and before long, arguments and fights were breaking out, the commission said. Justice Gall’s husband and 18-year-old son were among those involved in the altercations.
Shortly after midnight, four Black teenagers who had learned of the party from a friend showed up, and the fighting escalated, although it was unclear what role the four played, the commission said. The teenager who drove them there lost his car key in the fracas, the commission said.
New Hartford police officers, responding to calls about a large party with numerous fights, arrived at about 12:30 and were soon joined by officers from several other law enforcement agencies.
As the officers tried to clear the chaotic scene and the Black teenagers lingered while looking for the lost key, the commission said, Justice Gall, who is white, told them to “get off the property — and that’s from Judge Gall.” She added, with a vulgarity included for emphasis: “I’m a judge.”
Minutes later, she cited her judicial status again.
“You’re going to get in an Uber, buddy, or you’re going to get a cop escort home,” she said, adding: “That’s how I roll. That how Mrs. G rolls. That’s how Judge Gall rolls.” Over roughly an hour and a half, she invoked her office more than a dozen times, the commission said.
An officer suggested to her that if someone found the missing key, it should be returned to the police. Otherwise, the officer said, someone from the group that lost it would need to return to look for it further.
“If they come back looking for it, I’ll call you while they’re on the property,” Justice Gall said, adding: “If they did, they’ll be arrested, or they’ll be shot on the property. Because when they trespass, you can shoot them on the property. I’ll shoot them on the property.”
In another exchange, she said to the officers that the Black teenagers “don’t look like they’re that smart” and “were not going to business school, that’s for sure.”
Over the course of the diatribe, the commission found, the judge alternated between criticizing the officers for not acting as she wanted and expressing her strong affinity for them. She said at one point, “I would take anyone down for you guys.”
“You know that,” she said. “I am on your side.”
The post Judge Who Threatened to Shoot Black Teens Should Be Removed, Panel Says appeared first on New York Times.