Politics on the Hudson

The state Court of Appeals ruled today that a Kingston City Court judge can be admonished for failing to render timely decisions, but also found that he deserves a new hearing on the charges.

The ruling comes after Judge James Gilpatric, who was elected as a Supreme Court justice last month, was charged in August 2008 by the state Commission on Judicial Conduct with misconduct for failing to promptly decide 47 cases from July 2004 through March 2008.

The commission concluded that his conduct constituted a pattern of “persistent or deliberate neglect of his judicial duties.”

Gilpatric was a part-time judge at the time, and when he became a full-time judge in April 2007, he eliminated the backlog.

Gilpatric sought to dismiss the case, saying the commission lacked jurisdiction to “intrude into matters of internal court administration.”

The state’s top court ruled that the commission has the authority to admonish judges who are not completing cases on time. But it found that the Commission on Judicial Conduct should have allowed for a full hearing on the case, rather than deciding it through a summary judgment.

The attorneys in the case could not be immediately reached for comment.

The judges remitted the case back to the commission for a hearing.

“We are un-persuaded that the prior warning in this case was sufficient to render these delays misconduct as a matter of law, without the development of a record addressing the context in which they occurred,” the judges ruled unanimously. Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, the state’s former administrative judge, abstained.

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