As an ethics enforcement aficionado, I’m a regular follower of one of the relatively few entities that does its job pretty well: the state Commission on Judicial Conduct, which although it pursues its investigations in a confidential and slow manner is remarkably transparent when it’s ready to release its findings.
While couched in legal language, those determinations or stipulations can be both disturbing and highly entertaining. I’ll never forget the experience of scrolling through a monster 744-page stipulation in the case of an Elmira City Court judge who had — among other forms of bad behavior alleged or admitted — regaled a Police Benevolent Association banquet with a long narrative joke that included the imputation that a fellow city judge had a diminutive sexual apparatus. The comedian resigned.
It’s hard to beat that classic, but the commission came close with last week’s determination that Jeremy L. Persons, a town justice in Guilford, Chenango County, should be removed from the bench for what Robert Tembeckjian, the administrator of the commission, termed “a remarkable array of misconduct.”
Persons really touched all the bases: The commission concluded he made gross comments toward women (including a beyond-graphic description of why his ex-wife and another woman froze him out of a three-way sexual relationship); displayed his handgun in court and wore it in a visible hip holster in violation of the “concealed” part of a concealed-carry permit; failed to file paperwork to such an extent that the state comptroller’s office came calling; and sported a bumper sticker on his car that read “Boobies Make Me Smile.” There’s more, but I have to keep this column under 900 words.
How did this guy become a town justice?
“He got elected,” said Guilford Town Supervisor George Seneck, who much to his chagrin appears to have been the first local official to…
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