letters<\/a> to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Governor Kathy Hochul, asking them not to grant him any additional terms. While it\u2019s unclear whether he\u2019d be eligible for mayoral reappointment due to his age \u2014 state retirement age for judges is 70, and public records indicate he\u2019s currently 69 \u2014 Hochul could nominate him to a six-year term on the Supreme Court any time before he turns 70, and he\u2019d be allowed to serve its entirety.\u00a0<\/p>\nFabrizio\u2019s chambers declined to comment and referred amNewYork Law to the state\u2019s Office of Court Administration, which said it trusts the Mayor\u2019s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary \u201cwill thoroughly and fairly evaluate his long and productive career on the bench\u201d if Fabrizio seeks reappointment.<\/p>\n
Neither Mamdani\u2019s nor Hochul\u2019s offices responded when asked for comment on the letters the Center for Community Alternatives sent or to questions on whether their offices would grant Fabrizio additional time on the bench.<\/p>\n
Fabrizio, who was initially appointed by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, has been a judge in New York City\u2019s Criminal Court since 2001 and on the Bronx Supreme Court bench since 2010. One of his most egregious actions during that time, the Center for Community Alternatives says, was on defendant Norberto Peets\u2019 case: Fabrizio vacated Peets\u2019 conviction, then reversed himself and reinstated it in an unpublished decision that misstated facts from the case, then re-vacated the conviction after THE CITY reached out to the judge with questions on the procedure.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe multiple self-reversals, the fact that Judge Fabrizio\u2019s written order mischaracterized key facts from the trial record, and the timing of his final reversal all raise serious questions about his judicial decision making,\u201d the center writes. \u201cThis \u2026 demonstrates either profound instability in judicial reasoning or a willingness to reverse course to avoid negative press coverage. Either possibility is deeply troubling.\u201d<\/p>\n
The center also drew attention to a case where Fabrizio threatened and criticized a prosecutor\u2019s strategy, suggesting he\u2019d tell the jury the attorney was to blame for delays when issues arose with witness scheduling, then \u201cdelivered a sweeping, categorical condemnation of the defendant\u2019s worth as a person\u201d before imposing the maximum sentence.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is nothing redeeming that I find in anything I\u2019ve read about you, anything I\u2019ve heard about you, anything that I have experienced by being in your presence, in this courtroom, testifying at a trial,\u201d Fabrizio told the defendant. \u201cNothing. You are beyond redemption. You are beyond rehabilitation. You are beyond any hope of leading a life that is not a danger to anybody else.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another particularly problematic instance, according to the center, involved Fabrizio \u201cshutting down\u201d the Bronx Freedom Fund in 2009, a charitable organization that posted bail for indigent defendants charged with misdemeanors who otherwise wouldn\u2019t have been able to afford it. When he learned of the fund, he opened an investigation into it and determined it was a business operating illegally, even though it didn\u2019t take money from its clients.<\/p>\n
\u201c[He] slammed the door on the first effort in New York City to give poor defendants the same chance as wealthier New Yorkers to fight their cases from home rather than from Rikers,\u201d reads a letter from the center.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Legislative action overturned his ruling in 2012; the state government passed a law making charitable bail funds expressly legal in New York.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
A survey of the judge\u2019s conduct elicited attorneys saying he\u2019s \u201cbiased against the accused,\u201d \u201cassumes everyone is guilty,\u201d \u201csadistic and cruel,\u201d \u201cmentally unwell, capricious, unethical, biased to an astounding degree\u201d and \u201cdoes not have the appropriate demeanor to be a judge.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another attorney said they \u201cfear every appearance in front of him \u2026 I know there will be screaming.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
When Fabrizio was up for reappointment in 2018, criminal defense attorney Alice Fontier submitted a complaint about his behavior to the Mayor\u2019s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary.<\/p>\n
\u201cAttorneys have to walk on eggshells,\u201d Frontier\u2019s complaint said. \u201cHe is prone to being erratic and his rulings seem to depend more on his mood than anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the complaint, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio decided to reappoint him.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
Peter Martin, the director of the Center for Community Alternative\u2019s Judicial Accountability Project, emphasized how rare it is for a judge to receive formal complaints from attorneys and said it spoke to how imperative it is officials decline to reappoint Fabrizio.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been doing judicial accountability work for a little over four years now. Judge Fabrizio has been on my radar for most of that time,\u201d Martin said. \u201cIt\u2019s clear that he does not deserve any more time on the bench.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bronx Supreme Court building. Photo via Google Maps Judicial advocates say Bronx Judge Ralph Fabrizio\u2019s time on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,419,1984,5112,2710,1445,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":{"0":"post-147370","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-bronx","8":"tag-bronx","9":"tag-courts","10":"tag-hochul","11":"tag-judge","12":"tag-law","13":"tag-mamdani","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-new-york-city","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-the-bronx","18":"tag-the-bronx-headlines","19":"tag-the-bronx-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Screenshot-2023-09-12-at-4.13.40-PM\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Screenshot-2023-09-12-at-4.13.40-PM.jpg\" "\\"Advocates")
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