The commission twice disciplined the town justice, Paul F. Bender of Marion, for deriding women in abuse cases. Arraigning one man on assault charges, he asked the police investigator whether the case was \u201cjust a Saturday night brawl where he smacks her and she wants him back in the morning.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Eeric D. Bailey, a 21-year-old black soldier from nearby Fort Drum, was facing a disorderly conduct charge after a tussle with a white bar bouncer. Sitting three feet from Mr. Bailey, the bouncer identified him as \u201cthat colored man.\u201d Mr. Bailey\u2019s jaw dropped.<\/p>\n
The soldier, who did not have a lawyer, told the judge that the term was offensive. But Justice Pennington said that while certain other words were racist, \u201ccolored\u201d was not. \u201cFor years we had no colored people here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The commission had heard worse. After arraigning three black defendants arrested in a college disturbance in 1994, a justice in the Finger Lakes region said in court, \u201cOh, it\u2019s been a rough day \u2014 all those blacks in here.\u201d A few years before that, a Catskill justice reminisced in court that it was safe for young women to walk around \u201cbefore the blacks and Puerto Ricans moved here.\u201d <\/p>\n
In an interview, Justice Pennington said the commission had treated him unfairly. But he may not have helped his case when he told the commission that \u201ccolored\u201d was an acceptable description.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, to me,\u201d he testified, \u201ccolored doesn\u2019t preferably mean black. It could be an Indian, who\u2019s red. It could be Chinese, who\u2019s considered yellow.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And going:<\/p>\n
Arraigning a man in 1997 on charges that he had hit his wife in the face with a telephone, he laughed and asked, \u201cWhat was wrong with this?\u201d Arraigning a woman on charges that she had sexually abused a 12-year-old boy, the justice asked his courtroom, \u201cWhere were girls like this when I was 12?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
USA? A-OK.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From today’s NYTimes, “In Tiny Courts of New York, Abuses of Law and Power”: But serious things happen in these little rooms all over New York State. People have been sent to jail without a guilty plea or a trial, or tossed from their homes without a proper proceeding. In violation of the law, defendants […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
More reasons to love the NYTimes - Prose Before Hos<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n