Party Bosses Control Judges and the Courts – Costing Judge Their Constitutional Third Branch of
Government Judicial Independence to Reign in Abuse Laws Like the Bail Law
The political party bosses’ long-time control over who becomes a judge, has created an alternative
judicial reality that allows party bosses to use the NY Courts to make money, while it destroys the
court’s independence, preventing judges from using their NYS Constitutional powers as members of
the equal third branch of government to reign in abuses in the legislative and executive branches
of government.
- Although the NYS Constitution granted NYS Judges powers equal to the other two NY State branches
of government, the NYS Judiciary’s control & dependence on party bosses causes them to lose the
independence needed to function as the third independent branch of govt, as the U.S. Supreme Court
did when they restored the right of voters in presidential elections to determine the future of our
country. - NY Judges need the political approval and support of the party bosses to get elected,
re-elected, and advance to higher court positions. - The City’s Party Bosses and their Bar Associations screening panels’ partners profit from
control over who becomes a judge and judicial elections in multiple ways. - The Party Bosses, many of whom are lawyers themselves, and their connected attorneys, make
judges and hold influence over these judges even after the election, through the appointment of
judicial staff, power over judges’ court supervisors’ selections, and making money off of court
fiduciary appointments and cases where the same attorneys argue cases before the very same judges
they put on the bench. - Until NYC leaders legally challenge the unconstitutional bail law that 85% of New Yorkers are
against, the laws that allow 3,000 repeat career criminals to commit additional crimes and prevent
the necessary commitment of dangerous mentally ill New Yorkers constitutional rights to be safe
will continue to be violated. - Governor Hochul could be a lot more effective in stopping crime on the subway if, instead of
sending 750 National Guard members underground, she would sit down with the party bosses and
threaten them with taking their power over the courts away with judicial election reform, if the
courts the party bosses control fail to find a way
to lock up career criminals and commit the mentally ill to psychiatric hospitals.
Time is Running Out to Save NY’s Democracy. . . Progressives are Pushing Out Party Bosses in
Controlling the Courts . . . The Courts Could Soon Become Enforces of the Progressive Woke Culture
The Tammany Hall century-old dysfunctional NY court dynamic did not challenge the survival of the
city until the recent election of irresponsible Woke legislators who passed unconstitutional laws
such as the bail law, driving the out-of-control crime and the city’s economic decline, is
violating the NYS Constitution guaranteed right to every New Yorker, to be safe and their property
protected.
- The Tammany Hall judicial making system worked well for Boss Tweed and it still works well for
the political party insiders of today. Over the last decade, the continued politicization of the
courts and the takeover of the NYS legislators and NYC Council by Woke pro-criminal elected
officials caused the public to become prisoners of laws that violate their rights, safety, and the
NYS Constitution. - The Woke culture’s takeover of NY is making it crystal clear that Judges and the Courts need to
be freed from political control to function properly as the state’s third branch of government that
has the constitutional duty to check abuses of the other two branches, such as the bail law, which
violates the constitutional right of New Yorkers to be safe.
NYS Judges have the Constitutional Right to work with ICE but Don’t because They are Picked and
Controlled by Party Bosses Who Interconnect With Both the Legislative and Executive Branches and
Believe They are State Employees
When former Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law that no NY State employee can report a migrant to ICE, the new law did not cover elected judges who are not state employees. NYS judges belong to the
third branch of government–the judiciary, which is equal in power and constitutionally independent
from Cuomo’s executive branch. The Judiciary has both the constitutional right and an obligation to
contract and work with ICE. Sadly, Judges, subservient to Democratic party bosses who interact with
the legislative and executive branches of government, in one-party-controlled NY, have been
brainwashed to wrongly believe they are state employees and have no right to work with ICE.
- NYS Judges need to act as an information bridge or the go-between, to reestablish lines of
communication between ICE and the NYPD, to allow the NYPD to uncover the illicit network of gang
members or terrorists from migrants entering from the border with Mexico. - The migrant gangs are already coordinating with inter-state and international organized crime on
the level that the Mafia did after the 1957 Apalachin NY meeting of the heads of the five mafia
families. - The ringleader of one of the new migrant gangs, Franco Alexander Peraza Navas told cops after
being nabbed for a string of local heists, that the two-wheeled crime spree “is much bigger than me.” Peraza Navas said he regularly travels to Florida to deliver the proceeds from his New York City heists. - Mayor Adams, who now wants to turn over migrant criminals to ICE but is being blocked by the
socialist Woke City Council, can accomplish his goal of stopping migrant gang crime by directing
the NYPD intelligence division to work directly with judges who work with ICE.
NY Judicial Election Law is Unconstitutional: It Violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal
Protection Clause of “One Man, One Vote”
- The party boss-controlled election system that elects most of NYC’s Civil Court Judges, some of
whom sit in criminal court, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the
U.S. Constitution. - The election of judges in NYC, which was put in place by the corrupt Tammany Hall political
bosses over 100 years ago and still empowers today’s party bosses to control judicial elections and
the courts, violates the “one man, one vote” rule. Criminal Court judges are not directly elected. - Many of the Civil Court Judges who are elected by party bosses and are assigned to sit in
Criminal Court are elected both—boroughwide and by municipal court districts within each borough. - New Yorkers who want to shake up NY’s failing criminal justice system should look to the 1989
Supreme Court ruling declaring the NYC Board of Estimate (BOE) unconstitutional because 2.5 million
residents of Brooklyn, the city’s most populous borough, had no greater effective representation on
the board than 450,000 residents of Staten Island, the city’s least populous borough. - The U.S. Supreme Court held that the Board of Estimate was a violation of the Fourteenth
Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause “one man, one vote” principle. - New Yorkers who are blocked by progressive lawmakers in Albany and City Hall from reducing crime
have an opportunity to blow up the insiders-controlled-Tammy-Hall- designed judicial elections law
and end the 100-year reign of political bosses’ control of the criminal courts by challenging NY’s
judicial election law in court. - After a lawsuit knocks out the current system of electing judges in NYC, New Yorkers must demand
that Criminal Court Judges be elected in smaller districts, to allow the voters to choose the type
of judge they want to represent them on the Criminal Court bench. - To save NY, our great city needs a decentralized local system of electing judges, allowing the
85% of New Yorkers opposing the bail law to cut out both the political bosses and the ideological
progressives. - New Yorkers deserve to choose judges who reflect local values and concerns—the judges who will
recognize New Yorkers’ constitutional rights to be safe. Cutting out party bosses and ideological
progressives and allowing the public to decide who becomes a judge will provide judges with the
independence necessary to use their NYS Constitutional duty as members of the state’s third branch
of government so that the laws violating NYS Constitution are struck down. - Electing Criminal Court Judges by Assembly Districts will enable the voters to know the
candidate’s background and elect judges who reflect the values, concerns, and racial, ethnic, and
political diversity of each city neighborhood. Electing Supreme Court Judges in each of the larger
State Senate Districts will do the same for the higher court and get rid of the highly undemocratic
party boss-controlled judicial conventions. - A small local district system of electing judges will ensure the Court’s accountability to
voters rather than to political power brokers.
NY’s Lawmakers Have Done Nothing in 16 Years to Change Party-Controlled Judicial Conventions that
the U.S. Supreme Court Called “Stupid.”
In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9 to 0 that the judicial conventions’ law that party bosses
use to pick NYS Supreme Court Judges was highly political and lacking in wisdom. In their
concurring opinion, Justice Stevens, joined by Justice Souter, wrote that “the Constitution does
not prohibit legislatures from enacting stupid laws.”
- New York’s Supreme Court judges — who are NYS trial-level judges, preside over life- changing
cases, ranging from criminal felony charges to high-dollar civil matters. - Supreme Court Judges are nominated through an archaic Soviet-style system of judicial
conventions, without a primary. Judicial conventions are dominated by clubhouse delegates,
handpicked by party bosses. - The delegates are elected in uncontested primaries in each Assembly district and vote however
the party bosses tell them. At the conventions, delegates routinely read from the party bosses’
prepared scripts nominating judicial candidates for the NYS Supreme Court, while mispronouncing the
names of the nominated judges, showing their lack of knowledge as to who the nominees are. The
judicial conventions often take, from beginning to end, as little as 15 minutes. - Candidates who want to be elected to a New York State Supreme Court judgeship have no way, short
of being given the nod by the bosses, to make it to the NYS Supreme Court. The process is a sham
according to The NY Times. - Independent candidates for the NYS Supreme Court have virtually no chance of bucking the system.
Since the judicial delegates decide the Supreme Court nominations, to win the nomination, a
Judicial candidate not backed by the political bosses would need to recruit more than 100 judicial
delegate candidates to run in different Assembly Districts. - New York’s system of selecting judges was designed during the Tammany Hall era to allow the
political leadership of the party to control the courts to keep corrupt politicians out of jail and
to extort money from the rich, especially after they die.
Media Investigations on How Judges Are Elected and How Courts Operate Ended a Decade Ago,
Strengthening Power Brokers Political Control of the Courts
- The lack of accurate press coverage on how the party bosses exercise control over our judiciary
enable the NYS Courts’ constitutional dysfunctionality. - There has been no media follow-up to the 2007 The New York Times editorial calling the NY
State’s judicial selection system “a sham” and “undemocratic,” stating that the system “ensures
that … the voters do no more than rubber-stamp the decisions that are made by the party bosses.” - There has been no media follow-up to the 2019 NY Daily News investigation of Part 36
receivership appointments by Supreme Court Judges that showed how politically connected attorneys
sitting on the Brooklyn Democratic Party’s judicial screening panel that rates judicial candidates
qualified or unqualified to get the Democratic ballot line to run for prized Judgeships, are given
lucrative court-appointed receivership from the same judges they approved. - As The NY Daily News Editorial said, “without the rigged “Brooklyn Democratic Party controlled
screening panel, no party blessing, No ballot line.” - There was no follow-up to the 2015 Brennan Center for Justice investigation that concluded that
NY “entrusts the selection of judges neither to the voting public nor to the elected officials.
Instead, unaccountable political party leaders control every step of the process of making judges.” - The decade-long cover-up by the media on how the courts actually work caused a suppression of
everyone’s understanding that NY’s third branch of government, NYS judiciary is dysfunctional. - The Constitutional duty of judges as part of the third branch of government is so badly
misunderstood, or not thought about at all, that even NYS Judicial experts, such as retired Judge
Richard Weinberg, fail to recognize that judges have the right to turn migrants over to ICE. Judge
Weinberg, a former Criminal Court Judge, said on the Cats Roundtable WABC radio show, that he would
have locked the cop beating migrants up after they were released without bail, and dared the
Appellate Court to reverse him. - The absence of experienced reporters who can write proper investigative articles, analyzing how
the politics and the courts are intertwined, is allowing the party bosses and ideological
progressives to continue and increase their control over the NYS criminal justice system and block
judicial independence necessary for the judicial third branch of government to reign in abuses by
the other two branches of government.
NYS Needs a Knapp Style Commission to Investigate Politics in the Courts
In 1970, Mayor John Lindsay appointed Judge Whitman Knapp to clean up organized citywide financial
corruption within the NYPD. The U.S. Justice Department needs to set up a new Knapp Commission to
get political corruption out of the NY Courts after the November election. Stephanie Diller will be
as an effective lead witness for a new federal commission as Frank Serpico was for Judge Knapp.