New York State of the Judiciary 2015 - the disaster of the criminal "Gideon" unveiled

At the NY State of the Judiciary 2015 address the Chief Judge of the NYS Court of Appeals Jonathan Lippman made a flowery speech that New York is on the way to implement constitutional rights of criminal defendants to counsel established long time ago by the U.S. Supreme Court.

This part of Lippman's speech is more scary than inspiring.

First, an individual had to sue the State of New York so that the State of New York would wake up and recognize a systemic problem of continuous violations of the fundamental constitutional right of indigent criminal defendant in the State of New York for effective legal representation at every stage of criminal proceedings.

The State of New York, instead of recognizing the problem, spent taxpayers' money and fought tooth and claw through the initial lower court proceedings, and through two appeals, in the Appellate Division 3rd Department and the New York State Court of Appeals, before the case was actually remanded to the lower court, and proceeded to trial, and only before trial did the State of New York settle - and obviously, only to prevent public airing as to how bad the problem really is.

Think about the amount of money the State of New York spent on legal representation in a case where it FINALLY admitted existence of a systemic problem.

I do not find this situation inspiring.

Furthermore, the settlement agreement covers only 5 counties out of 62 counties of the State of New York.  

Thus, other 55 counties at this time may continue NOT providing assigned counsel at arraignment, providing assigned counsel with unmanageable caseloads, and failing to monitor competence or actual effectiveness of the work of defense counsel for the indigent, whether through the public defenders offices, legal aide or assigned counsel program.

There is an interesting concession in the agreement.  "Incident" or "sporadic" failures of counsel to appear for the indigent defendants will not be considered a breach of the agreement.  And, with the exception termed in such broad language, I am sure this exception can be used as a loophole to swallow the entire rule and obligation to provide effective assigned counsel at arraignments.

A disastrous figure that the settlement (but not Lippman) cited was over 500 and, in some counties, over 700 cases as caseloads of public defenders.  Such caseloads are completely unmanageable and constitute a constructive denial of meaningful legal representation.

All in all, it can be deemed that in counties with such caseloads on public defenders, legal defense of indigent criminal defendants is non-existent, and all convictions ever made under such circumstances should be instantly vacated and reversed.  Will the State of New York make this huge step?  I highly doubt it.

Moreover, what Lippman did not cite is the invention by his court system of a rule where a criminal defendant whose case has been botched by a criminal defense attorney may not sue that attorney for malpractice until and unless the criminal defendant overturns his conviction, often caused by that same malpractice, and shows "actual innocence".

Such a rule does not exist for malpractice in civil cases, the botched civil case does not have to be reversed for the right to sue for malpractice to arise.

Why does this rule exist?

Obviously, to insulate criminal defense attorneys from any malpractice liability for botched up cases.

Since appellate courts, as a matter of policy, affirm practically 99.9% of criminal appeals, and since the standard of "effective assistance of counsel" set by the court is extremely low, the chance of overturning the conviction in order to satisfy the "criminal defense malpractice rule" is next to zero.

And apparently, this court policy exists to absolve the overworked public defenders from malpractice liability, even though, with 700 cases per attorney, it is obvious that they cannot possibly provide proper legal representation - and should decline accepting cases where they cannot provide such effective representation.

So, the solution that the "spectacular" and "absolute best" New York judiciary has so far found for the staggering problem of ineffective assistance of criminal defense counsel for the indigent because of excessive caseloads is - while not relieving the caseloads - invent a way to block criminal defendants from suing their public defenders for accepting cases where they knew they could not possibly provide effective legal representation - and, predictably, botching the cases.

Thus, indigent criminal defendants in New York are hurt several times - by not being given assigned counsel at arraignment, by being given overworked and underfunded assigned counsel, and then by being blocked from suing his or her assigned counsel for malpractice due to predictably botched representation resulting in a conviction that is impossible to overturn due to courts' policies of priority of finality over fairness.

And existence of such "policy" approaches to resolution of constitutional problems in New York courts is the real problem that Lippman did not address.

New York State of the Judiciary 2015 address - the fake promise of future declarations on "civil Gideon" while presently available "civil Gideon" rights are frustrated

I have written in this blog about how New York courts frustrate access of Pro Se litigant to effective legal representation.

My readers give me feedback that the situation is rampant as to denials of assigned counsel where counsel is badly needed - and where people are entitled to assigned counsel by statute.

Examples are:

Family court and foreclosure proceedings.

In Family Court, judges started to require submission of tax refund information, and disregard the family's debt obligation, including child support and child support the arrears obligations.  With a large refund, even if it has to be applied to the family's mortgage, car payment (and we have no public transportation where I live and practice law, so the car is the only way to get a job and provide a livelihood for the family and children), or court-ordered child support or arrears, assigned counsel is habitually denied in Family Court.

When individuals are appealing from Family Court decisions, appellate divisions impose a payment cap to the assigned appellate counsel which exists no matter how big the record is and can only be extended by pennies as compared to the work that is supposed to be done.

Online research databases are notoriously expensive, local law libraries understaffed, located far away from the assigned counsel (if this is a rural area), are not open during the weekend and evening hours where attorneys are free from court appearances and can do their work on the appeals

Thus, with research practically not covered by the payment cap, with review of large records not covered by the payment cap, indigent Family Court appellants are practically punished for taking the case to trial, as their assigned appellate counsel face the dilemma - to work without payment in reviewing the record, or to skip through it without proper research (which is what is often done).

Thus, the already given right to assigned counsel is frustrated - and Lippman could work at least on not frustrating rights to assigned counsel that already exist before trying to provide assigned counsel in more cases.

In foreclosures, assigned counsel is available to indigent homeowners by statute, but the first time the indigent homeowner appears before the judge to ask for that assigned counsel is usually at the "settlement conference", 60 days after the service of the foreclosure complaint, when the homeowner is usually in default and waived all of his or her affirmative defenses.

Assigning counsel at that point is more or less useless, and the statute does not presuppose a possibility of advising the homeowner of his right to apply for an assigned counsel in the text of the foreclosure complaint, nor to advise the homeowner that he will not be in default until he exercises that right, until the counsel is assigned and has 20 days after assignment to file the Answer and Affirmative defenses.

Also, the same indigent homeowner who has a right to an assigned counsel at the trial level, will be denied that right on appeal.  By the courts over which Lippman supervises and has authority to change these rules, but doesn't, preferring instead to throw around populist slogans like this:

Unrealistic resolutions do not help much.

Resolutions without funding create false illusions and false hopes in people, which is cruel.

Lippman provided no promise that the "joint resolution" he is seeking with the Legislature will have any funding at all.

What "civil Gideon" rights exist now are already watered down and frustrated, as I explained above.

It appears that, for Lippman, it is more important to make "the first statement of its kind" than to make sure the statement will actually work or has sources of funding, or that before he makes such a statement, he mended the holes in how the already existing "civil Gideon" rights are (mis)handled by his courts.

New York State of the Judiciary 2015 - are the declared new "community justice centers" new "Ol' Boys' Club" business ventures or will they resolve any problems of the criminal justice system? Only time will show.

In his "State of the Judiciary 2015" address the Chief Judge of the New York State Court of Appeals Jonathan Lippman said the following:

Well,  Lippman keeps saying everywhere that we'd better close the door of our courts if we cannot bridge the justice gap - and the doors of the courts remain open, while the gap is not even close to be bridged, as Lippman acknowledges in that same State of the Judiciary 2015 address.

Now Lippman is saying "without trust there can be no justice" while public trust in all branches of the government, including the judiciary, is now at "all time low" according to the latest public opinion polls.

So, apparently, it is just some vacuum-filler words that our Chief Judge felt obligated to throw around in his State of Judiciary 2015 address about the non-existent "public trust" in the judiciary.

Jonathan Lippman indicates that the "rifts" between "some communities" and the government may be bridged by "working together" to deal with "low-level crimes", and "together" meaning between the "communities", the courts, the prosecutors and the probation departments.

Forgive my skepticism, but my experience as a defense attorney (including communication with prosecutors) prevents me from believing in this idyllic situation without seeing hard facts, reports and numbers - and none were provided in the State of the Judiciary 2015 address by Judge Lippman.

First of all, it is the prosecutor's job to prosecute crimes and not to "mend rifts with the communities".   If a prosecutor does his or her job, there should be no rifts.

The same refers to probation.

In my experience though, prosecutors are aggressively overcharging crimes to exert pleas, habitually withhold exculpatory evidence and habitually bluff about availability of support for often unsupportable charges.

As to probation, long time ago a "friendly" prosecutor admitted in private that the probation is the fastest way to prison, and it is better to call probation officers "violators", because that's what they seek to do - not to rehabilitate people convicted of crimes, but to violate them and pack them off to jail/prison.

That's not the law.  The law designed probation as a rehabilitative alternative to incarceration.  But that's how probation now works, in a large number of cases suggesting policy and collusion between probation and prosecutors.

And prosecutors wholeheartedly support such a policy, because it makes their job to pack of people to jail so much easier.

In probation violation proceedings, unlike the original criminal proceedings, hearsay is admissible, and acts of third parties are counted against the probationer toward violation of probation (think a bottle of wine belonging to your partner in your fridge at home that your probation officer found).

Probation has been known to violate people for most ridiculous of reasons, such as - taking a freezing animal, like a kitten, from out of the cold where, let's say, for a convicted sex offender, there is a condition prohibiting having pets (on the theory that ANY sex offender, including, obviously, those who are themselves under age or in a 16-22.5 situation, where the boyfriend is slightly above the 4-year age difference that can serve as an affirmative defense to a "statutory rape" charge).

Probation officers attempt to violate people for curfew for being in an ER and unconscious and failing to report to the probation officer being in an ER within 24 hours of getting there, whether the injured person can physically do it or not.

Lippman suggested to "bridge the rift" by "alternatives" to incarceration such as "drug treatment courts".

This alternative looks this way:

• First, the criminal defendants' right to remain silent in the criminal proceedings is compromised from the very beginning of the criminal proceeding, as a matter of court policy; and
• Then, drug courts violate that already convicted individual for failure to abide by the drug treatment at a very high rate and make drug court another "fast lane to prison", without the benefit of full constitutional protections at trial.

Drug courts are notorious for making it impossible for participating individuals to maintain a gainful employment, since at any time the individual may be called in for a random urine test, and it will be a violation not to abide.  Drug courts do not accommodate participants' work schedules.  Drug courts do not accommodate participants' lack of driver's licenses and the need to get to court, and that includes places where public transportation is non-existent and participants live at a great distance from the courts.

No employer, especially in these tough economic times, will keep a participant's job for long under the circumstances.

Remember, 49% of the 9 bln dollars New York spend on incarceration each year goes to post-conviction incarceration, including probation violations.

So, between judges who pledged to be "tough on crime" and can be best described not as "neutral arbiters", but as "convictors", and prosecutors who forgot long time ago their constitutional "dual" role to be tough on crime but at the same time fair to everyone involved in the criminal justice process, including the accused, and the probation officers who should better be described as "violators" rather than rehabilitators, 

With that said, maybe, my skepticism will be defeated in the future by the success story of the Brownsville Community Center announced by Lippman.  Maybe we will not learn in the future that the Center is yet another business venture of the "Ol' Boy's Club" and has nothing to do with the declared purposes.

Only future will show.

Until and unless I see real results of success of such pilot "community centers" claiming that they "re-engineered" response to anything, and provide alternatives to incarceration, job training etc., I will hold my breath as to any celebrations for opening such centers.

Porter Kirkwood for judge! He is exactly what Delaware County needs - clueless, vindictive and ready to lie to protect somebody with a status

Porter Kirkwood now officially announced that he is "running" for the second seat of the County judge in Delaware County, New York.

Exactly as the number of cases in Delaware County is dwindling, the second judge became necessary.  At $152,000.00 a year, and the current judge's (Carl F. Becker's) friend and former colleague and subordinate for years.

Porter Kirkwood is the only attorney I know who lost a trial with nobody appearing in opposition and while having all available resources.  He simply did not use the resources and assumed that he will win anyway.  He lost.

Porter Kirkwood prosecuted a child neglect case where he treated the child as an adverse, hostile party, instead of trying to protect him.  The interesting detail was that the reason he treated the child as a hostile party because the child's interests were, indeed, adverse - to Porter Kirkwood's own son.

Many people who live in Delaware County know from personal experience, and I wrote a lot on this blog how Carl F. Becker fails to disclose his own conflicts of interest, fails to recuse himself when such conflicts of interests exist and retaliates against people who raise the issue of that conflict of interest, or simply people who Carl F. Becker does not like.

Porter Kirkwood is a good student of Carl F. Becker's style, having worked under Carl F. Becker for years, and having been Carl F. Becker's friend for the years Carl F. Becker was on the bench.  Kirkwood was regularly seen behind the courthouse talking to Becker while having cases pending in front of Becker, and who knows how many times they communicated without being seen.

I described here how Porter Kirkwood lied to me that my client does not have a file with Social Services.  Had he told me the truth, I would have learnt during the pendency of the Family Court case that Becker is disqualified from the case by his extrajudicial knowledge of the case and by participation in the case as the attorney for the Social Services, and adoption attorney for one of the relatives of a party, due to which conflicted situation the Delaware County Department of Social Services, then represented by Becker, created a secret indicated report against the wrong person, without that person's knowledge (but with Becker's knowledge).

I learned about Porter Kirkwood's lie only in 2013, when the existence of the file and of the contents in the file came up through proceedings in another county.

The Family Court (judge Connerton) rejected without any reasoning the motion to vacate due to Becker's non-disclosure.  Well, nothing like corporate solidarity between judges.  Now Porter Kirkwood is joining into the brotherhood, and will continue his dirty tricks on the bench.  Exactly what Delaware County needs.

Porter Kirkwood is very vindictive, which is another trait that this county absolutely needs in a judge. After all, his current client the Department of Social Services brought a frivolous and fraudulent child neglect proceeding after I asked Judge Becker to recuse, and I was the first attorney (according to what I was told) who did that based on Becker's non-disclosure to the parties and counsel that he is presiding over a bench trial (judge as a factfinder) where he is "finding" issues of credibility of his own former clients and colleagues, about whom he has extrajudicial knowledge.

Porter Kirkwood's agency and Porter Kirkwood also brought that child neglect to try to label my child for purposes of possible (and still possible) lawsuit against Porter Kirkwood's son for a gang assault against my child on the school's ground.

Nothing like the father of a child who assaulted your child prosecuting you for child neglect (meaning that he must protect the interests of my child against me) and, during such a prosecution, trying to "evaluate" your child and label your child to weaken future litigation of your child against his son.

That was, to me, the ONLY purpose of the proceedings (well, apart from humiliating and labeling us as child abusers or neglectful parents).  That was the proceeding where Kirkwood brought in an expert who, without ever seeing the child, attempted to labeled him (I do not know how much Kirkwood paid him to sell out his professional ethics). 

Yet, somehow that did not work.  Had my child been labeled, he would have had a weaker case against Porter Kirkwood's own child in the future potential gang assault litigation tolled due to infancy.  Porter Kirkwood could not stand such a chance.  Porter Kirkwood is a really ethical lawyer, you know.  So he rushed to protect - who? - his own son's interests - by using his position as an Assistant County attorney and prosecutor of child neglect cases.  Yet, the case was dismissed.

Just the integrity and temperament we need for Delaware County and Family Court judge.

Recently, I placed on this blog two recordings - of the Chief of Delaware County jail and of Porter Kirkwood.  The Chief of Delaware County jail lied to me that all attorneys' files are being searched when they come to see inmates in that jail (while that never happened for 40 years, it is illegal, and they started to do that to me only when I started to represent a particular client, the person who Becker hated, who sued Becker in one case, who served Becker with a lawsuit in another case).

In his recording Porter Kirkwood pretended that he does not know about the policies of the Chief of jail in his own county - meaning, he confirmed that as an attorney he is incompetent.

I also know that Porter Kirkwood had a private practice on the side while he was a full-time county employee, and had paying private cases which presented a conflict of interest to him as then Assistant County Attorney (he defended a case claiming elder abuse when, as an Assistant County Attorney, Kirkwood had to investigate and protect victims of elder abuse). 

Kirkwood also represented those conflicted private clients during his taxpayer-paid county time.  But, of course, Becker and Kirkwood could not entrust handling this case to any other defense attorney or judge.  Becker forgave Kirkwood incompetent representation and failure to raise defense of standing in the Answer, and the Appellate Division affirmed, ignoring the issue of waiver.

Also, please, bear in mind that if you elect Gary Rosa, Gary Rosa did not work for social services for decades and does not have extrajudicial knowledge about people in front of him regarding what is the file of people who were investigated, and, possibly, have secret undisclosed indicated reports against them which never came to be reviewed in court.

Porter Kirkwood has such knowledge, which already disqualifies him from presiding over many cases.  No litigant in Delaware County can consider himself or herself safe from having a secret file on them with Porter Kirkwood's current client the Delaware County Department of Social Services.  Nothing like having a judge who does not disclose his extra-judicial knowledge about you (unfavorable) or about social services' witnesses (favorable, as his former colleagues) presiding over your trial as the only fact-finder, and Porter Kirkwood will also preside over criminal trials and sentencings and may factor in such secret information that he knows and you don't, into his sentencing decisions.

With his level of "integrity", I have no reason to doubt that Kirkwood will be using the secret information against you without telling you.

Incompetent, vindictive, unethical - what more do you need in a Delaware County and Family Court judge?  You will have twins in the courthouse.  And with those twins glued to the bench, you will have nowhere else to go, they will block with their butts all doors to justice for you and all opportunities to ever have an impartial and competent judicial review of your cases.

Vote!  .... for somebody else.

What is the essence of the rule of law in Nebraska, is long dead in New York. And we need to revive the rule of law now - before it is too late.

Recently, when I was putting in a Russian-language blog on death penalty in the United States, I came across a spectacular document, a "Sentencing Philosophy" statement by the Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court of the District of Nebraska the Hon. Laurie Smith Camp.

I provide here a portion of Judge Camp's statement that I found extremely relevant to what is going on in courts in New York state - in federal and state courts.

Judge Camp writes in her "Philosophy of Sentencing" statement that the essence of the rule of law is equal application of laws notwithstanding the individual characteristics of a litigant, and uniformity and, thus, predictability of such application from case to case:

I completely support and share Judge Camp's view as to what the rule of law should be, what it does, and what will happen if the rule of law does not exist.

Yet, I've lost count how many times I've been sanctioned for requesting judges to follow the law, or to recuse because they favor a status and refuse to apply the law in the fair, reasonable and predictable manner, as it should be applied.

I've been sanctioned for what precedents and statutes say is legal conduct.

I've been sanctioned for raising constitutional arguments based on legal research and precedents.

And, as Judge Camp says, since I am not at all assured how a certain judge will rule in a certain case, even where the law (case law, statutory law and constitutional law) is quite clear as to how the judge should rule, I, as a litigant cannot make reasoned decisions about my own life, and I, as an attorney, can only give my clients a "triple" advice:

(1) this is what the law is;
(2) this is what the record is of this particular judge as to this law, in various cases, for various parties, such as:

• men v. women;
• rich v. poor;
• people with a criminal record v. people with no such record;
• social services v. everybody else;
• the government v. regular people;
• politically connected attorneys v. regular people or sole practitioners;
• attorneys who sit with judges on "councils", "Committees", donate to judges election campaigns etc. v. attorneys and parties who did not cater for the judge in any way

(3) and as a bottom line - I DO NOT KNOW how the judge will rule in your case, even if the law is clear.

And, as an attorney and officer of the court, I did not take my constitutional oath of office to guess whims of judges and to cater for those whims in order to win cases.

Unfortunately, I am far from the only one affected by this "selective" application of the rule of law in federal courts within the State of New York and in New York state courts.

As a result of my own personal experience as an attorney and litigant, communications with other attorneys, feedback on this blog, I can, unfortunately, conclude that the problem with unpredictable court rulings, and ruling contrary to the existing law which are not corrected on appeal, or where people simply cannot afford to appeal and the judge who refuses to apply proper law, knows it - such cases proliferate and constitute the rule rather than the exception.

It is definitely not my personal problem only, it is the problem of access to justice for people in this entire state.

The rule of law should be there, and if it is not there, there will be problems like Judge Camp described in her Sentencing Philosophy, and worse.  The rule of law prevents tyranny and it prevents chaos.

If the rule of law dies, tyranny and chaos will ensue.

Tyranny is already here, as is already known to many litigants who were ever confronted with court decisions that they cannot change where courts defied the law, and where courts clearly favor parties and attorney with high status and political connections than those who the law favors.

Chaos may ensue following the further advancement of tyranny.

It is to make sure that the rule of law is there and is enforceable, the beginnings of tyrannies may be timely caught and rooted out, and chaos is prevented, the Civil Rights Act was enacted in the 19th century, and in the 19th century U.S. Senators pointed out that, where there is no rule of law, rebellions may ensue.

Federal courts made the Civil Rights Act practically unenforceable with judicially created amendments existing in the form of various "doctrines" restricting application of the Act - "abstention" (until the biased state court predictably decides against you) doctrines, "deference" (to the biased state court) doctrines, the "Rooker-Feldman" (your case was already heard by the /biased/ stated court, you are a LOSER and we won't hear your claims of constitutional violations by that court) doctrine, self-given immunity doctrines etc.

So, the door to nipping governmental, including judicial, tyrannies in the bud at their very beginning, through civil rights litigation, is slammed by federal courts into the public's face, and what remains is that shut door to federal courthouses and state courts where judges rule according tot heir whims and not according tot he law, knowing that litigants can do nothing about it.

One does not have to have a crystal ball to predict that, if the rampant judicial corruption, misconduct and refusal to follow the applicable law continues on a scale it exists now, and against the worsening economic situation, public rebellion is not far away.

As a person who was born in the Soviet Union, a country rampaged and ravaged by a revolution and its consequences, I would really prefer this country to be spared of any violent solutions to this problem.

We need to seek legislative resolutions of the rampant problem of judicial misconduct, access to court and rule of law crisis in New York.   Now.  Before it is too late.

New York State of the Judiciary 2015 address - delving into the State of the Legislature

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, in his State of the Judiciary address, Judge Lippman failed to address glaring problems pertaining to the New York State judiciary that cause and contribute to the "justice gap" that exists at this time.

The only issue that Judge Lippman was interested in was raising pay for judges.

Yet, Judge Lippman made excessive appeals for reforms to one of the two other branches of the government - the Legislative branch.

Judge Lippman appealed to the Legislature to reform this and that, while not trying to reform a damn thing about his own (very) filthy stable, where he could do that, simply by changing court rules of recusal and rules requiring judges to publish their financial reports and family trees (at least to litigants, on conditions of confidentiality, if necessary, as to the rest of the public, but at least allowing litigants to verify for themselves whether a factfinding judge is or is not disqualified from the case).

It is easy to deflect your own problems by pointing into out that your neighbor (the Legislature) did not do his job properly.

But Lippman has enough of his own problems with the judiciary to clean up.

If Lippman does not see those problems and considers New York judiciary "spectacular" and "the absolute best" in the country, as he did in his State of the Judiciary 2015 address, maybe Lippman is not professionally competent for his job as the overseer of the New York court system, and should be taken off that job now, not waiting for his retirement at the end of this year that will not come a second too soon.

New York State of the Judiciary 2015 address on the state of the judiciary - New York needs the best judges money can buy

In his State of the Judiciary 2015 address made on February 17, 2015, the Chief Judge of the State of New York Jonathan Lippman addressed - predictably - issues pertaining to the judiciary.

Which issues did Judge Lippman, part of the judiciary, address?

The ONLY issue (in Judge Lippman's mind) pertaining to the judiciary that needed to be addressed in his "State of the Judiciary" address was raising judicial salaries.

At this time, judicial salaries at at the "meager" $152,000 per year for the County judge and at the no less meager $174,000 for the Supreme Court justice this year.  I use the word "meager" because that same word was used by the Supreme Court judge Kevin Dowd in a court proceeding in front of an indigent party when the judge explained to that party that he, Judge Dowd, has the authority, in exchange for the "meager bucks that he is being paid by the state, to decide issues that the litigant was raising.

Judge Dowd recused from that case after a complaint was filed against him, but not before he abused that indigent party some more.

Well, back to the "meager" pay of judges.

Once again, that was the ONLY issue pertaining to the state's judiciary that Judge Lippman believed necessary to address.

Not the recusal reform - where judges are considered "arbiters of their own recusal", even though the standard for recusal is from the point of view of OBJECTIVE reasonable DISINTERESTED OBSERVER, and the judge sought to be recused is neither an observer (he/she is a participant), nor is the judge disinterested (when his own integrity or impartiality are being challenged), nor can he/she be deemed by any stretch of imagination, objective, for the same reasons.

The objective for recusal in the first place is to ensure the litigants' constitutional right of access to court, and the litigants' constitutional right to a fair trial by an impartial tribunal (court).

Those constitutional rights may not be subject to judicial "discretion", they must answer to strict rules, and in New York it is not so.

It is difficult, if at all possible nowadays to find an attorney who would be brave (or suicidal) enough to make a motion to recuse.  

It should be prohibited for judges to sanction attorneys for making motions to recuse against them due to obvious conflicts of interest and because such motions are seeking to ensure a constitutional right for attorneys' clients, yet, judges in New York rain such sanctions on attorneys who dared to make such motions left and right - and turn attorneys into the disciplinary committees for further sanctions.

Lippman did not touch upon the practically non-existent system of judicial discipline.

Of course, Lippman knows just how non-existent the system of judicial discipline is since he personally invited to his confirmation hearing the NYS Commission for Judicial Conduct's counsel Robert Tembeckjian while there was no public notice issued for such hearings, and while a complaint against Lippman was pending in front of the Commission at that time.

The Commission has long become a shredder for complaints against judges, starting with the County/Family court level.

The Commission needs to be disbanded, and a transparent and effective system of discipline needs to be established.

To demonstrate just how corrupt and ineffective the Commission is, New York State needs to do just one thing - open the records of complaints against judges, and of answers to those complaints (if the Commission even has such an archive), and to provide copies of those records in the judicial directory, against the names of the judges complained about.

Since complaints are about court cases, the public will then be able to investigate whether conduct complained of actually occurred and is reflected in the record - many times it is - and see for itself whether complaints were dismissed improperly.

At this time, such statistics is unavailable to the public since proceedings against judges are secret.

Lippman also did not cover the burning issue of judicial corruption or, if not corruption, appearance of inappropriate behavior.

In federal courts, judges at least started to begin to pay lip service to the fact that there may be a problem in judges attending private seminars, and judges are required to publicly disclose such attendance.

In New York, it is impossible to get information:

• if a certain judge participated in any social functions/seminars sponsored, directly or indirectly, by attorneys, and where the judge had an opportunity for an ex parte communication with such attorneys;
• whether the judge participated or "served" or "serves" presently on any of the countless "Boards", "Councils", "Programs", "Projects", "Trusts", etc. where participating attorneys have an unlimited opportunity for ex parte communications with judges;
• whether the judge or judge's relatives have social networking connections with litigants or their attorneys, like Facebook friendships;
• whether certain law firms employ judge's relatives and judges in question are in a position of power to influence decisions for such law firms, and whether such law firms appear in the courts where judges preside.  Where law firms may have hundreds of attorneys, and where the relation with the judges may be obscured by different last names or common last names, it is absolutely necessary to start requiring judges to publish his or her family trees, up to the 6th degree of consanguinity and affinity, with places of work of the judge's relatives (for purposes of disqualification when judges preside as factfinders - the same as the law for disqualification of jurors);

It is absolutely necessary to equalize the way jurors and judges are disqualified from fact-findings functions, including voir dire,  background investigation and peremptory challenges.

It is absolutely imperative to allow cameras (and not only of the media, but mainly litigants' video cameras) into the courtroom to preserve evidence of potential juror, attorney and judicial misconduct or non-verbal communication that cannot be captured by the transcripts, especially that, as my disciplinary case indicates, court transcripts can be and have been falsified.

It is absolutely imperative to do away with the all-encompassing and stretching beyond any limits "absolute judicial immunity", an unconstitutional self-serving gift of judges to judges, by which judges are now allowed to violate the Constitution the moment they have made an oath to protect it and get on that bench through that oath.

Yet, none of that was addressed by Lippman in his State of the Judiciary Address in 2015. 

The only important issue was raising the already high pay for judges.

Apparently, New York has to have the best judges money can buy.