JUDGES HAVE TO PAY BILLS, TOO
The New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct “admonished” – its mildest sanction – a Nassau County judge who has repeatedly failed to pay a debt incurred during his lawyering days when he was sued by clients for providing inaccurate information. In 1996, Alan L. Honorof, now an Acting State Supreme Court Justice, represented Peter Beck and Dominic Sergi, who were defendants in a corporate dissolution matter involving their company, ASF Glass. Honorof told his clients to purchase shares in ASF without telling them they’d be personally liable. A settlement was reached in the resulting lawsuit ordering Honorof to pay $55,000, half of which he deferred in monthly installments that he stopped paying in 2001. "If you don't pay your debts, maybe a credit card company sends you a letter," said Robert Tembeckjian, counsel for the commission, as reported in Newsday. "But if a judge doesn't pay his legally enforceable debts, he is subject to public discipline by the commission."

STRAW MAN
Virgnia Attorney General sent New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg what ammounts to a cease-and-desist letter in the odd news bit provided by The Washington Post. A new Virginia law goes on the books in July which makes it a felony for New York authorities to continue to conduct under cover sting operations in Virginia targeting illegal gun purchases. Convinced that illegal gun sales in Virginia contribute to violent crime inNew York, Bloomberg has been outfitting private investigators with hidden cameras and sending them into Virginia gun stores to try to make illegal "straw purchases," in which one person legally fills out a form and buys a gun for someone else. This prompted furious gun rights groups to rally the Republican-controlled General Assembly to intervene.

 
SHE GOT FERDINAND MARCOS, SO WATCH OUT
Newsday also tells us that Columbia Law Professor Debra Ann Livingston was unanimously confirmed 91-0 by the Senate on Wednesday to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for thhe Second Circuit. Livingston was formerly a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, where she handled the criminal case against Ferdinand Marcos, the president of the Philippines, and his wife, who were accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars and defrauding U.S. banks. Livingston was nominated to the bench by President Bush last June.

 
PROSTITUTION PROSECUTION
This transcript of a Wednesday WNYC radio dispatch is worth sifting through. It details a struggle by state legislators, most prominently Assemblyman William Scarborough of Queens, to change the way the courts treat juvenile prostitutes. Instead of treating them like criminals, Scarborough says, they should be seen as victims who’ve been sexually exploited. “What we are trying to do is to get these children to be treated as children to give them an opportunity to redirect their lives,” Scarborough told WNYC. He’s trying to pass legislation that prohibits anyone under 18 from being prosecuted for prostitution, but in his way stands John Fienblatt, the city’s criminal justice coordinator. Fienblatt fears losing “legal leverage,” which he thinks has already happened with the prosecution of the mentally ill. “Sometimes the way to get people . . . help is to compel them to get help . . . and I think if you take that away you’ve lost . . . your coercive power and I think your going to lose more people back to the streets.”

PRISON GUARDS HAVE RIGHTS, TOO
And once more we're grateful to Newsday for this story about a federal judge who last Friday approved a settlement — announced yesterday — in a lawsuit that saw the New York Civil Liberties Union squaring off against New York’s Department of Correctional Services over the right of a Muslim corrections officer to wear a skullcap while on duty. The NYCLU had claimed it was unconstitutional for the state to refuse to make religious accommodations for prison guards. U.S. District Judge Harold Baer, Jr., agreed. According to Newsday, the U.S. Department of Justice's civil rights division has filed its own lawsuit, which is pending, on Haqq's behalf to force the correction department to change its grooming regulations for uniformed guards.

 
"NEW YORK IS LIKE ANOTHER COUNTRY TO MOST OF THE REST OF THE COUNTRY"
And although the judicial consequences of this New York Times story are only hinted at, it’s worth a gander. The piece limns presidential hopeful Rudolph Giuliani’s ambivalent statement at a debate last week that Roe v. Wade would “be ok to appeal . . . if a strict constructionist judge viewed it as a precedent” and speculates on the flexibility of the once stringent abortion position in an increasingly alienated Republican Party. While Pew Research Center head Andrew Kohut says half of Republican voters aren’t familiar with any candidates’ position on the topic, anti-abortionist firebrand Phyllis Schlafly thinks the former Mayor’s tentative high polling is irrelevant. “A lot of people just don’t know about his background,” she told the Times. “New York is like another country to most of the rest of the country.” She added, “I don’t think Giuliani is acceptable to a majority of the Republican Party.”