NY Village and Town Courts

WNBZ News reports this morning that

"Franklin County’s Chief Assistant District Attorney is accusing a Saranac Lake judge of “making a mockery” of the local justice court system.

The comments came last week in court papers filed by Jack Delehanty surrounding Village Justice Paul Herrmann’s handling of a recent case. “Both the procedure and substance utilized by Judge Herrmann in this matter mock the administration of justice in our society,” Delehanty wrote.

Coincidently, there is an article about village and town courts in NYS in todays New York Times. The very first page of this article is not kind to Northern NY courts.

A woman in Malone, N.Y., was not amused. A mother of four, she went to court in that North Country village seeking an order of protection against her husband, who the police said had choked her, kicked her in the stomach and threatened to kill her. The justice, Donald R. Roberts, a former state trooper with a high school diploma, not only refused, according to state officials, but later told the court clerk, “Every woman needs a good pounding every now and then.”

A black soldier charged in a bar fight near Fort Drum became alarmed when his accuser described him in court as “that colored man.” But the village justice, Charles A. Pennington, a boat hauler and a high school graduate, denied his objections and later convicted him. “You know,” the justice said, “I could understand if he would have called you a Negro, or he had called you a nigger.”

And several people in the small town of Dannemora were intimidated by their longtime justice, Thomas R. Buckley, a phone-company repairman who cursed at defendants and jailed them without bail or a trial, state disciplinary officials found. Feuding with a neighbor over her dog’s running loose, he threatened to jail her and ordered the dog killed.

“I just follow my own common sense,” Mr. Buckley, in an interview, said of his 13 years on the bench. “And the hell with the law.”

NY is one of 30 states that do not require a town or village justice to be a lawyer. Elected justices get a six day training course. The article claims that NYS requires more training for manicurists and hair stylists than they do for town justices. The article goes on to say that justices are not screened "for competence, temperament or even reading ability." They only need to be elected.