(CN) — The small-town judge who pulled a gun on a Black litigant in his courtroom can't reclaim his seat on the bench, New York’s high court ruled Thursday.
The complaint stems from an incident in late 2015 when Judge Robert Putorti, who had served as the justice for Whitehall Town since 2014, waved a gun after a Black man quickly crossed the “stop line” in front of the bench. The man had been sentenced by Putorti over a knife assault on two people.
“Judges must observe higher standards of conduct than members of the general public, so that the integrity of the judiciary will be preserved,” New York Court of Appeals judges wrote in their decision.
Four judges unanimously agreed on the opinion, including Chief Judge Rowan D. Wilson and judges Michael J. Garcia, Anthony Cannataro and Caitlin J. Halligan.
According to the court's decision, Putorti recounted the incident in news articles and to other judges and court personnel.
In 2015, he first told the incident to his cousin, a Hofstra University journalism student, for an article that was eventually published in a Long Island publication. He then showed the article to another judge in 2016, and later was overheard telling other judges about the article and incident at a 2016 Washington County Magistrates Association meeting.
“Rather than show remorse, he described his conduct in a press interview and boasted about it to his colleagues, while repeatedly, and gratuitously, referring to the litigant’s race,” the judges said.
Putorti’s supervising judge counseled him and told him not to display his gun in court unless he was confronted with deadly physical force. After speaking to his supervising judge, Putorti claimed he stopped carrying a firearm, which he had kept attached to the underside of the bench.
Putorti was also found to have acted inappropriately by holding fundraisers for himself and the Whitehall Elks Lodge in 2019 and 2020 without properly identifying himself as a judge.
While the high court said this does not warrant removal in itself, its timing with Putorti’s investigation following the firearm incident shows an “unwillingness or inability to abide by the rules of judicial conduct.”
In 2020, the Commission on Judicial Conduct voted 10 to 1 to remove Putorti from the bench for his “extreme breach of judicial decorum.” The commission’s decision pointed to Putorti’s emphasis on calling the litigant a “large Black man,” saying it showed evidence of racial bias.
“The courthouse is where threats or acts of gun violence are meant to be resolved, not generated,” Commission Administrator Robert Tembeckjian said at the time. “To then brag about it repeatedly with irrelevant racial remarks is utterly indefensible and inimical to the role of a judge.”
Following his removal, the court suspended Putorti without pay. His term was set to expire in 2025.
In arguments in front of the court, Putorti said he was not acting with racial bias and was simply trying to describe the man. In their opinion, the Court of Appeals judges pushed back against this argument.
“But this is not a mere physical description of the litigant,” the judges wrote in their decision. “By repeatedly referring to the litigant in the manner that he did, [Putorti] exploited a classic and common racist trope that Black men are inherently threatening or dangerous, exhibiting bias or, at least, implicit bias.”
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