Above: The Middletown Town Hall and court building. Photo via Google Street View.
Can a judge be fair in a town where everyone knows everyone else? The recent dismissal of a small-town judge by a state commission shows that even in the tiniest towns, judges have to be careful not to play favorites.
Glen R. George, a 74-year-old judge for the town of Middletown in Delaware County, was stripped of his position on May 1 by the State of New York Commission on Judicial Conduct for engaging in "serious misconduct."
The commission found George, who is not a lawyer, "unfit for judicial office," because of two incidents that "bear the unmistakable taint of favoritism."
The first incident involved a 2009 traffic ticket issued to Lynn Johnson, the former owner of Titan Drilling in Arkville and George's "former employer and long-time friend." According to the commission's decision, George dismissed Johnson's ticket on a technicality without disclosing his connection to Johnson and without a prosecutor present.
This is the second time George had been warned by the commission about presiding over the cases of involving the Johnson family. In 2000, the commission issued a warning to George advising him to consider recusing himself from cases involving Joan Johnson, Lynn Johnson's then daughter-in-law.
The commission also cited potential favoritism in another case, this one a dispute between Long Island resident Michael Guidice and Middletown resident Ron Jenkins over water damage on Guidice's Middletown property, on which Guidice was planning to build a summer home.
According to the commission's decision, when Guidance called the Middletown Court in 2011 to discuss filing a small claims lawsuit against Jenkins, George inappropriately discussed the merits of the claim with him and implied that Guidice couldn't win the case. Jenkins, according to the decision, was "a long-time local resident with whom [George] was friendly."
Guidice eventually filed the case and requested that George not be allowed to preside over it. According to the complaint, Guidice testified that "after he told Mr. Jenkins that the matter would not be heard by [George], Mr. Jenkins stopped diverting water onto his property."
Guidice also filed a complaint with the Commission on Judicial Conduct against George.
The 11-member commission, which reviews complaints of ethical violations by judges, sternly chided George for his conduct in its May decision. Eight members of the commission voted to remove George from the bench. Two dissented and asked that he be censured but not removed. One member was absent.
The majority concluded that "as a judge for more than 20 years; [George] should have recognized that his actions were inconsistent with fundamental ethical principles."
But the dissenting judges stated in a separate opinion that while George deserves a "severe rebuke," removing him from office "lowers the bar for removal too much."
Writing for the dissent, Judge Joel Cohen said that the case "presents the realities of the State's town courts, in microcosm."
"Without pinning a medal on this judge - because I believe he should be censured -- his misconduct, while procedurally deficient and certainly deserving of criticism, did not corrupt the system of justice, was not plainly motivated by favoritism, and thus, I believe, did not constitute 'ticket fixing,' at least in the traditional sense."
In another illustration of just how small small towns are, George's daughter, Heather Gockel, is a town judge in her own right -- in the neighboring town of Roxbury. The Catskill Mountain News wrote about their "father-daughter judge team" in 2009.
Correction: In 2009, when Lynn Johnson received the ticket that was dismissed by George, he was no longer the active owner of Titan Drilling. Johnson retired from the ownership position in 1997.
Read the entire decision from the commission below or by clicking here.
Glen George Commission on Judicial Conduct decision, May 1, 2013
