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Friday, December 2, 2005
Panel: Blackburne Must Be Removed
Let Suspect Slip Away
By Reuven Blau
The State Commission on Judicial Conduct last week recommended
that Queens Supreme Court Justice Laura D. Blackburne be removed
from the bench for helping an assault-and-robbery suspect evade
arrest outside her courtroom.
The majority of the 11-member commission concluded that Justice
Blackburne had “set a reprehensible example for Court Officers
and other court personnel.” Eight members voted for removal,
only tow said she should be censured, and one was not present.
Unions Pleased
The majority recommendation stated that her action was “such
gross deviation from the proper role of a judge that it justifies
the sanction of removal.”
A total of 149 state and local judges have been removed by the
commission since 1978. But Ms. Blackburne is only the fifth Supreme
Court judge to face the commission’s harshest penalty.
Police and court union officials hailed the decision, arguing that
Justice Blackburne’s move in June 2004 was illegal and jeopardized
public safety. They have contended that she has long been biased
against Police Officers.
In 2002, she drew the unions’ ire when she dismissed assault
charges against a man facing trial for shooting a police officer
because the case had lingered for three years. A state appellate
court overturned that decision on Nov. 17, 2004.
Still Has Defenders
But City Councilmen Charles Barron of Brooklyn and Leroy G. Comrie
of Queens defended Ms. Blackburne, a former counsel for the state
NAACP who has long been prominent in Queens politics. Mr. Barron
told the New York Times that the recommendation was “outrageous,
extreme, unjust, straight-up bogus.”
Richard Godosky, Ms. Blackburne’s attorney, said he would
ask the state Court of Appeals to review the commission’s
decision. Such rulings are rarely overturned.
The commission noted in its decision that the facts of the case
were “largely uncontested.” On June 10, 2004, Ms. Blackburne
ordered Court Sgt. Richard Peterson to assist Derek Sterling in
exiting the courthouse through her chambers as Det. Leonard Devlin
waited outside her courtroom to arrest him following a court appearance.
Mr. Sterling, who was apprehended the following day was being sought
in connection with a violent mugging the month before in which the
victim suffered a fractured eye socket.
According to court transcripts, Ms. Blackburne said that the Detective
waiting outside her courtroom deceived her, and she told Mr. Sterling:
“I am not trying to keep you from being arrested. I’m
trying to keep you from being arrested today in my courtroom based
on obvious misrepresentation on the part of the Detective.”
‘Community at Risk’
Michael J. Palladino, the president of the Detectives’ Endowment
Association, maintained that the Detective acted properly. “Selective
enforcement by a justice of the court cannot be tolerated, because
it undermines the integrity of the judicial system and places the
public and the law-enforcement community at risk,” he added.
As a result of the incident, the Court Officers’ Association
and the Supreme Court Officers’ Association issued an order
instructing their members to hold defendants who are wanted by the
police until the proper law enforcement officials arrive.
COA President John McKillop blasted Ms. Blackburne as “a
political hack that disgraces herself in the Housing Authority and
then thought she could hide in the judiciary of New York State,
where she again disgraced herself.”
In 1992, she resigned as chairwoman of the HA after it was reveled
that she spent money on business trips overseas and more than $340,000
to redecorate her office, with a $3,000 pink leather couch and $5,500
for pink venetian blinds among the furnishings.
“Hopefully, we will have seen the end of her so-called public
service,” Mr. McKillop said.
Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly called her courtroom behavior
“outrageous conduct by any measure,” and told the New
York Times, “Her extraordinary conduct merited this appropriate
sanction.”
Justice Blackburne also infuriated the law-enforcement union in
2002 when she dismissed an assault charge against William Hodges,
who was facing trial for shooting Police Officer David Gonzalez
during a 1999 drug bust. She ruled that the Queens District Attorney’s
Office had denied him a speedy trial, but the DA countered that
some of the delays were caused by Mr. Hodges’s attorneys.
“Laura Blackburne has demonstrated throughout her career
that the only judgment she possesses is bad judgment,” said
Patrick J. Lynch, the president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent
Association. “She aided and abetted a felon in escape that
was wanted for questioning for violently robbing the citizens in
Queens. She knew what she was doing.”
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