"THE PANOPLY OF THE HUMAN CONDITION" 
The Commission on Judicial Conduct’s fourth censure of a Town and Village Justice since 1993 turned into a debate on compassion recently. It also became another referendum on Chairman Raul Felder, who suffered a a no-confidence vote from his fellow commissioners last April due to the tone of his writings in a book co-authored with comedian Jackie Mason. The New York Law Journal has the story. While voting to censure Valatie Village and Kinderhook Town Justice Edward J. Williams for his ex parte conversation with a cop at a local fair, Felder asked the commission to take note of the judge’s disability — Williams has been a quadriplegic for 39 years after a swimming accident. “We cannot claim to be a civilized and caring society, and yet, in our actions, not enfold into our judgments, where pertinent, the terrible burdens that others must bear in order to traverse the landscape of life,” Felder wrote. “It is difficult for me to accept that . . . in our rulings and prosecutions we do not fully allow the panoply of the human condition (other than those often rehearsed easy-to-fake emotions of remorse or contrition) to play a more prominent role in our considerations and actions as a Commission.” In a footnote to the decision, the rest of the commission found that Felder’s opinion “inappropriately relies on matters not in the record regarding Judge Williams’s personal life.” Richard D. Emery, who voted for Williams’s removal from the bench, added that the judge himself had made no such argument. “I assume that if he did, his able counsel would have offered evidence to support such a claim.” Added Commission Administrator Robert H. Tembeckjian, who had also sought Williams’s removal, “It made no difference to the victims of the judge's misconduct that he is in a wheelchair. This case was simply about the judge's ethical, not physical, limitations.”

GOOD SON, BAD SON 
Brooke Astor’s son, Anthony D. Marshall, and his attorney, Francis X. Morrissey, Jr., have been indicted on criminal charges related to their handling of the former socialite’s estate, reports The New York Times. Mr. Marshall’s son, Philip, accused his father of stealing Astor’s money last year. But last December, a court evaluator’s report that has not been made public said that such claims were unsubstantiated. Nevertheless, a grand jury in Manhattan had been hearing evidence since September, after the District Attorney’s office investigated the signing of a third amendment to Ms. Astor’s will in 2004, which transferred large portions of her estate to her son. Her estate is valued at $132 million, with an additional trust estimated at over $60 million.

 
KERIK PAYDAY
A former New York Corrections Department officer who claimed former Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik denied him promotions because he is black has agreed to settle his federal racial discrimination case against the city for $125,000, The Daily News reports. Earlier, Southern District Judge Kimba Wood had dismissed another portion of former Deputy Warden Eric Deravin’s suit, which claimed Kerik had passed him over multiple times between 1998 and 2000 after Deravin fended off a harassment claim levied by Kerik’s former lover, Correction Officer Jeanette Pinero. (Wood also said letters from Deravin’s colleagues that suggested Kerik said he’d punish anybody disloyal to him were “vague.”) “The major reason why Eric brought this lawsuit was to right the wrongs caused by Kerik's actions and to bring out the type of person Bernard Kerik was,” said Deravin’s lawyer, Gregory Lisi.

 
COSMETICS KING SUIT SQUASHED
Elsewhere, Newsday reports that Eastern District Judge Leonard Wexler has dismissed a lawsuit brought by the L’Oréal cosmetics company against Ronkonkoma-based Quality King Distributors, a $3-billion-a-year hair-care products distributor, and its spinoff company, Pro’s Choice, for allegedly devaluing the L'Oréal brand by reselling its products in less than fashionable salons. Quality King “diverts” L’Oréal products from middlemen and resells them to other dealers. Wexler said L’Oréal and its former FBI agent security chief had tried to bolster a weak civil case by attempting to get former Justice Department colleagues to press criminal charges. Wexler wrote that when approached in 2003 to prosecute Quality King criminally, “The United States Attorney's office showed commendable judgment and ethics in deciding not to pursue the matter, especially in light of the fact that the request to prosecute originated from a former supervisor in the office.” L’Oréal's chief of security, former New York City FBI agent Charles Domroe, had previously written an internal company memo that said L’Oréal's lawyers were meeting with the U.S. Attorney's office “to see if criminal processes could be applied to help our pending civil lawsuit along its way.”