It’s a long article (8 pages). In short, it says that many small-town courts are run by judges that are less than qualified - and some make pretty outrageous findings…
It makes me really wonder what would happen to me if I happened to be stopped for any minor offence outside of Rochester…
Some select quotes:
Outside Rochester, in Le Roy, a justice who is still in office concocted false statements, state officials said, to help immigration officials deport a Hispanic migrant worker in 2003. Although the man had pleaded not guilty to trespassing, the town justice, Charles E. Dusen, issued a court order saying he had been convicted. In an interview, Justice Dusen said he tried to right his wrong after the worker’s lawyer complained. But the man was still deported.
Last December, disciplinary officials disclosed that in a five-year period, a Rochester-area justice had mistakenly imposed $170,000 in traffic fines beyond what the law allowed. And in June, a justice in western New York was disciplined for threatening to jail a man — and warning him to “bring a couple thousand in bail money” — over a complaining phone message the man had left him.
Of those who are not lawyers, about a third — more than 400 — had no formal education beyond high school. At least 40 did not complete high school, though several went on to earn equivalency degrees…
…Those without law degrees must take six days of classes at the start. Lawyers do not have to attend, but all justices must take a 12-hour refresher course once a year…
…At training’s end, justices must score at least 70 percent on a test of 50 questions, all true or false. Those who fail can retake the course, and the test. “We don’t decide whether they’re qualified to be a judge,” Ms. Dobiel said. “The people who have elected them have already made that decision.
In 2004, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund found that people awaiting trial in Schuyler County in the Finger Lakes were jailed for months simply waiting for court to convene again. A high school student arrested on a minor drug charge in the summer of 2003, it said, was still sitting in jail in October…
…A Rochester poverty lawyer, Laurie Lambrix, said that when she appealed the case of a mother of six — a black woman evicted in 1999 by a white landlord who she said had made racist comments — a justice in nearby Gates told her she could not examine the court file of her own client. “I knew court records were public records,” Ms. Lambrix said. “I couldn’t believe a judge would be ignorant of that.”
She was lucky; at least there were records, which she eventually obtained. In many justice courts, it is next to impossible to reconstruct what happened. Some towns spring for a stenographer or taping system, and some justices try to scrawl notes while they preside. But in some cases, there are not even notes.