{"id":329123,"date":"2026-08-25T10:22:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T10:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/329123\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T10:22:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T10:22:15","slug":"why-terrible-soft-on-crime-judges-plague-new-york-courts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/329123\/","title":{"rendered":"Why terrible, soft-on-crime judges plague New York courts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inflicting let-\u2019em-loose judges like Janice Robinson on New York City is only one foul result of the Empire State\u2019s judge-picking system: It feeds plenty of corruption, too. <\/p>\n

But let\u2019s start with how she spins the revolving doors<\/a> of the criminal justice system like a crooked roulette wheel, freeing dangerous, violent criminals as soon as they\u2019re arraigned. <\/p>\n

Her egregious rulings include sending two alleged attempted murderers strutting out of court with no bail set at all; she has never gone along with a prosecutor\u2019s recommendations for bail, or to hold a perp on remand.<\/p>\n

And she\u2019s not a rare bad apple: She\u2019s the all-too-typical fruit of the poisoned tree of the state\u2019s rotten court system<\/a>.<\/p>\n

City courts, in particular, are the last vestige<\/a> of Tammany-style bossism, with judges overwhelmingly selected not on any kind of merit, but by the needs of the local Democratic leaders who control the party judicial-screening panels: If they put you on the ballot, you win. <\/p>\n

This system doesn\u2019t just favor insiders \u2014 it is designed and run by insiders for insiders; insurgent candidates rarely bother running, as it\u2019s virtually impossible to win.<\/p>\n

\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPost Editorial Board<\/p>\n

Judge Robinson, for one, is the niece of Nick Perry, the longtime assemblyman from East Flatbush who served as the majority whip for two decades before stepping down to become the US Ambassador to Jamaica.<\/p>\n

Once elected, lower-level Civil Court judges like Janice Robinson can get bumped up to fill vacancies on the Criminal Court bench \u2014 where she sits now \u2014 which is normally a mayor-appointed position subject to a higher degree of scrutiny.<\/p>\n

An unqualified nepo-baby like Robinson \u2014 who got a \u201cnot approved\u201d rating from the city Bar Association \u2014 would have trouble suckering even a badly politicized body<\/a> like Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary into tapping her for the criminal bench.<\/p>\n

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But the state Democrats who control the courts have endless workarounds to fit party favorites into plum jobs as \u201cinterim appointments.\u201d<\/p>\n

The system rewards political hackery \u2014 and because Democratic hacks swim in a lake of \u201cabolish prisons\u201d and \u201cdecarceral justice\u201d lunacy, many of the spittoon-polishers who make it to the bench are criminal-friendly ideologues like Robinson.<\/p>\n

Others are just venal (see especially the Surrogate\u2019s Court) and some don\u2019t care about anything except the paycheck.<\/p>\n

The Legislature\u2019s made a mess of the state\u2019s criminal laws, but it\u2019s the county Democratic Party chiefs who burden the courts with so many worse-than-useless judges.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Inflicting let-\u2019em-loose judges like Janice Robinson on New York City is only one foul result of the Empire…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":329124,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[4190,98,10916,419,303,304,4234,9,24,55,54,123744,56,299],"class_list":["post-329123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-bail","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-supreme-court","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-editorial","tag-judges","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-nick-perry","tag-ny","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329123","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=329123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=329123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=329123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=329123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}