Sullivan Town Court Judge Resigns Over Tirade at Teenager

By E. C. GOGOLAK

Published: June 18, 2013

On several occasions during the summer of 2011, someone stole money from a farm stand that James P. Roman operated on his property in Madison County, N.Y. Convinced he had found the culprit that August, Mr. Roman, a justice of the nearby Sullivan Town Court, decided to take action, according to a complaint filed last year by the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct.

 

What followed was an obscenity-ridden confrontation during which, according to the complaint, Mr. Roman pushed a 15-year-old boy to the ground, took his bike, threw it in the boy’s yard and threatened him with a baseball bat.

On Tuesday, the commission, the state agency that disciplines judges, announced that Mr. Roman had agreed to resign from his post. He also agreed never to seek or accept judicial office again.

Neither Mr. Roman nor his lawyer, Alan J. Pope, returned calls for comment on Tuesday.

Mr. Roman filed a response to the complaint in October 2012 in which he admitted using “harsh words and expletives,” damaging the boy’s bicycle and telling him to stay off his property. But he denied that he had pushed the boy off the bicycle or used a baseball bat “in a menacing manner.”

Robert H. Tembeckjian, administrator and counsel for the commission, said in a phone interview on Tuesday: “It is clearly improper for a judge who is obliged to uphold the law to act outside the courtroom in a manner that disrespects the law and takes disputes to such an extreme level. Mr. Roman recognized that in deciding to leave the bench.”

Mr. Roman had been a justice at the Town Court in Sullivan since 1998 and has also worked as a lawyer. Unlike judges in state and federal district courts, justices in town and village courts, who make up two-thirds of the state judiciary and try misdemeanor cases and lawsuits, do not work full time; nor are they required to have a law degree. Critics have long tried to overhaul New York’s town and village courts.

Judges in state and district courts and justices in town and village courts have been disciplined at roughly the same rates, according to Mr. Tembeckjian.

Roughly 1,800 complaints are made against judges in New York each year, and it is not uncommon for the commission to discipline or even remove members of the state judiciary for behavior off the bench. About half of the commission’s disciplinary measures resulted from conduct by a judge outside of the courtroom and not directly related to judicial duties, Mr. Tembeckjian said. He gave examples ranging from a judge using the influence of judicial office to evade a speeding ticket to the recent case of a judge in Syracuse accused of engaging in sexual activity with his 5-year-old niece.