Judge & executioner
New court boss chops jurists to speed up cases
The state’s new chief administrative judge is cleaning house of jurists who slow down the wheels of justice, The Post has learned.
Four judges who had applied to continue working past the retirement age of 70 are leaving the bench, according to the Office of Court Administration.
“She’s not playing around,” a court insider said of Chief Judge Janet DiFiore, who upon taking the post in January vowed to address a crushing case backlog. The exiting jurists are:
Betty Williams, 72, a Brooklyn Supreme Court justice who legally double dips, drawing an annual $193,000 salary and $135,902 pension.
Williams ripped court administrators’ decision to remove her.
“Neither my mental nor physical fitness is in question,” she said. “I am . . . deeply concerned that the Office of Court Administration has chosen to remove a qualified judge that was duly elected by 2.8 million citizens of Kings County in 2012.
“The most concerning issue is that the entire pro- cess of removing a qualified and elected official is shrouded in secrecy and devoid of any appellate process.”
But court sources said she missed 44 workdays this year, not including unlimited sick days and five weeks of paid vacation.
“She is actually a nice lady,” said a veteran Brooklyn Supreme Court clerk, who added that the judge is indecisive and rarely throws defendants in jail. “On the plus side, she insists defendants pull up their pants and dress appropriately for court.”
On The Robing Room, a Web site where lawyers rate and review jurists, a critic wrote, “A dumber, more ineffective judge has never sat in Kings County.”
Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Raymond Guzman, 74, a former Bronx prosecutor who, according to a critic on the Web site, shows up late and engages in lengthy sidebars.
Guzman, the critic wrote, “is not entirely ignorant of the law, but he is almost laughably inarticulate.”
Nassau County Civil Court Judge Sondra Pardes, 74, who presided over a custody-agreement case involving Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly and is labeled on the site as “slow,” “pet- ulant” and “doddering.”
Appellate Court Judge Thomas A. Dickerson, 72, a former Green Beret paratrooper in Vietnam who made an off-color joke from the bench in October 2014.
When a female attorney arguing in a motorcycle accident noted she had never ridden one, Dickerson said she would “look good in leather,” the legal-news site Above the Law reported. He later apologized.
“It blew a whole career,” the court insider said.
When judges turn 70, they can apply for certification to stay on the bench. They can apply for recertification at 72 and 74 but cannot serve past 76.
Williams was denied recertification, said Lucian Chalfen, spokesman for the Office of Court Administration. He said the other three judges “withdrew their applications.”
Of the 43 judges statewide who applied for certification or recertification, 39 were approved, Chalfen said.
Under DiFiore’s predecessor, Jonathan Lippman, only one of 75 applicants combined in 2014 and 2015 was de-certified.
“There’s a different management tone,” the insider said. “[DiFiore] is a real pragmatist. Her theme is day-to-day court operations. She’s trying to squeeze out more efficiency and productivity. The wheels of justice grind slowly, but a little WD-40 goes a long way.”
DiFiore declined to comment for this story.
Pardes said, “It has been an extraordinary honor and privilege to serve as a justice of the New York State Supreme Court.”
A Dickerson spokeswoman would say only that he was retiring at the end of the year. Guzman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.