Can a judge who orders attorneys to commit attorney misconduct and engage in ineffective assistance at a jury trial remain on the bench?

Since courts are created as an institution to maintain the rule of law in the country and prevent the country from sinking into chaos, unlawful decisions of judges are especially dangerous.

Here I will address two decisions of Judge Dowd (communicated to me through his law clerk Claudette Newman to whom Judge Dowd delegates a lot of his duties), in a case Mokay v. Mokay, Delaware County Supreme Court, Index No. 2007-695.

Judge Kevin Dowd recently issued an order that, if I cannot try the case, an attorney without any trial experience must then do it.

Of course, it is inappropriate for an attorney to try a case when coming to the team as a 2nd counsel only 2 weeks before trial, and against the wishes of the client who hired the 2nd counsel for a limited purpose of assisting the trial counsel, not trying the case.

Such conduct would subject an attorney to malpractice claims and disciplinary prosecution.

Yet, the court ordered exactly that.

The 2nd attorney had no choice but to request the client to release her on consent, which was done.

The court then ordered the trial counsel, despite her doctor-authorized medical leave, injury and pain, to still come and try the case, or else the court threatened to use "legitimate means" to "secure her attendance" at that trial.

Of course, making a counsel who is injured and in pain to appear and try the case, on top of violation of counsel's own constitutional rights, is a violation of the client's right to an effective representtion of counsel.

A counsel who is injured to the point of having a doctor-issued leave from work for 2 weeks because of injury, pain and medication, simply cannot provide an effective assistance of counsel in a jury trial.

Yet, that's exactly what the court ordered, and threatened to "secure attendance" of the trial counsel if she does not show up.

Of course, that threat put extra stress on me, shot my already high blood pressure even higher and prevented me from taking the medicine I need, because the medicine makes people drowsy and, in the event Judge Dowd uses his allegedly "lawful means" of "securing attendance" against me, today or during the next days, I must be non-drowsy to be able to oppose these unlawful actions.

So, in retaliation for my motions to recuse on behalf of my client, I am punished by the judge by not allowing me the most basic of human rights - to have doctor-prescribed treatment and to be able to get better.

I should not be put into this position, of course, but, since Judge Dowd so far was not disciplined no matter what he did, he thinks he can continue to disregard applicable law in whatever way he and his law clerk like.

Of course, this is not the rule of law, but that is what we have in our neck of woods in upstate New York.

Will the judge ever be disciplined for practically ordering two attorneys to engage in ineffective representation of counsel, simply because Judge Dowd could not accept that Americans with Disabilities Act compels him to grant a medical adjournment to my client, the same way as Judge Dowd already granted TWO adjournments of the same jury trial to the plaintiffs?

I do not know.

So far, NONE of my complaints against judges in New York who committed misconduct, complaints that were supported by irrefutable evidence (affidavits of witnesses, court records), resulted in discipline, and this is the fate of not only of my complaints, but of the overwhelming majority of complaints against judge in the entire country.

Usually, only criminal charges can unseat a judge, and a judge is charged with a crime only when the crime cannot be hidden any longer and is of extremely embarrassing nature.  

Yet, one never knows.  Maybe, at some point, the NYS Commission of Judicial Conduct will recall why it was created - certainly not for whitewashing judicial misconduct, but for investigating and prosecuting it to protect the people whose lives rogue judges ruin.