Since the start of 2000, no criminal trial judge in New York City’s Supreme Court has been reversed in a higher percentage of appealed cases than Justice Richard Lee Price.

Which is news to Price. And it is a surprise to some — but not all — who are familiar with the second-generation jurist’s 37-year career in the city court system, the last 25 on the bench in the Bronx.

“I don’t think it’s so,” said Price, asked to comment on the dubious distinction he has earned in recent years. “I read reversals, and I never see too many of mine. But if you have the facts, I’ll go by those facts.”

“He’s not one of those judges — and there are some — that we think of as reversal fodder,” added Robert Dean, director of the Center for Appellate Litigation, who counts himself “very surprised” that Price has the top reversal rate among criminal term judges in the city.

Dean cautioned giving too much weight to reversals. Some, he noted, can be blamed on conflicting precedent or laws that are in flux, while others might be a result of prosecutorial error despite the judge’s best efforts to keep the trial on track.

Those caveats are well taken. But they don’t account for Price’s reversals, most of which have stemmed from discretionary decisions that he made. Given that reversals in criminal cases are rare, the numbers aren’t large. But Price has clearly picked up more than his share.

Indeed, according to an analysis by Judicial Reports of judges who were appealed at least 10 times from the first of 2000 through the end of last year, 13 of Price’s rulings were reversed in full or in part, out of the 45 of his cases that went to the Appellate Division, First Department. The resulting reversal rate of 28.9 percent for the six-year period through the end of last year is higher than for any other judge in the five counties in the city. Most judges in the survey are reversed in fewer than 10 percent of their criminal cases that are appealed. (To learn more about citywide reversal rates, see today's LexMetrics .)

VIEW FROM THE BAR: MIXED

Some of the lawyers who know Price best were not surprised by his reversals. He is an “odd duck,” a veteran Bronx criminal defense attorney who requested anonymity said.

More to the point, Price doesn’t seem to mind sticking out, and therefore isn’t the sort of judge who will shy away from rulings out of fear of reversal.

He won’t hesitate to exclude questionable evidence, defense attorneys say, and he has been known to go out of his way to test the constitutionality of the prosecution’s sentencing practices. Earlier this year, Bronx District Attorney Robert T. Johnson took the rare step of seeking a writ of prohibition against Price in one such case.

At the same time, Price is known among some in the defense bar as a very tough sentencer. He has been corrected by appellate courts more often than most judges on that account.

“His reversal rate is somewhat misleading as a comment on his jurisprudential talents and his intellect. They are above average,” explained another criminal defense attorney who also requested anonymity. “However, he is a bit of an iconoclast. He’s something of a maverick. He can be a little loopy.”

It is no wonder, the attorney added, that Price should end up at the top of the reversal charts.

This year, Price has again picked up a disproportionate number of reversals — and has continued to burnish his reputation as a judge who is in neither the prosecution’s nor the defense’s pocket. Through October of this year, four of his rulings had been reversed or modified. No other criminal judge in the city has picked up that many reversals. Just two others, Budd G. Goodman (now retired) in New York County and Deborah Dowling in Kings County, have been reversed three times, and four criminal term judges in the city have been overturned twice since the start of this year.

In the case that prompted the Bronx DA to seek a writ of prohibition against him, Price was reversed in February for rulilng prosecutors had to meet a higher burden of proof than the so-called persistent violent felon statute requires to establish whether a defendant deserves an enhanced sentence. In two other rulings, the appellate court reversed motions to suppress evidence that Price had granted. In another case, a sentence he imposed was reduced by the appellate court on grounds that it was excessive.  

PRO-DEFENSE — EXCEPT WHEN HE’S NOT

His tendency to impose harsh sentences aside, Price is generally well regarded by defense attorneys. But there are exceptions.

One attorney who defended a client in a felony trial in Price’s court asserted that his hostile attitude toward the defense was “appalling.” The jury acquitted the defendant of the top count, so there was no appeal. But the attorney asserted that Price committed a “host of errors, some so outrageous that they’re beyond belief.”

For instance, he botched the jury instruction for prior inconsistent statements, the attorney said, and he also failed to correct erroneous, highly prejudicial remarks by the prosecutor about a supposedly unanimous vote by the grand jury to indict the defendant.

“He has a reputation for being an oddball, and that is an understatement,” the attorney concluded. “He also has a reputation for ruling correctly and knowing the law. I didn’t find that to be the case.”

Two other criminal defense attorneys, however, offered unmitigated praise for Price.

Marvin Raskin, a criminal defense attorney in the Bronx who has represented defendants in seven or eight major felony trials in his court, called him “respectful,” “even handed,” and “one of the best” judges in the city. “He is independent, and notably so,” Raskin added. “That is the first word I would use to describe him. He is independent, stern, knowledgeable and a role model for other judges.” He also “believes in the Fourth Amendment, which is a unique quality for judges.”

David Jaros, legal director for The Bronx Defenders, a nonprofit organization that represents indigent defendants in the Bronx criminal courts, seconded that assessment of Price.  His high reversal rate is, if anything, a badge of distinction, Jaros maintained.

The reversals he has earned for suppressing questionable evidence “speak well of him and of his willingness to hold the People to their burden and to require that the evidence be obtained in a constitutional manner. He’s not afraid to suppress key evidence if it was unconstitutionally obtained, regardless of the implications for the case,” Jaros added. “We certainly need judges like that. An independent judge who is willing to take those kinds of risks given the public pressure to ignore legal error is deserving of respect.”

Price’s intrepid approach to his job was best exemplified three years ago in People v. Bell, Jaros said. The defendant, Sherman Bell, had been convicted in 1981 of kidnapping in a case in which he and his confederates held the child of an acquaintance for ransom for a short while before releasing her unharmed. He served more than 20 years in prison for that crime and ended up in Price’s court after his release he was ordered to register as a sex offender.

By all accounts, there had never been any suggestion of any sexual act or intent on Bell’s part. But the kidnapping of a child was one of the qualifying offenses enumerated in the Sex Offender Registration Act, and so the district attorney’s office argued that Bell should spend the rest of his life as a registered sex offender.

“Price wondered if that was constitutional,” said Jaros. “He saw a legal issue, and he was concerned that it was being missed. He actually called up our office and asked us to take the case and brief the issue. We briefed the issue, and Justice Price wrote a decision that the law was unconstitutional as applied to people convicted of crimes in which there is absolutely no indication of any sexual motivation.”

Prosecutors did not appeal Price’s ruling. It has since been cited in more than a dozen law review articles and court rulings in New York and four other states.

FINDING HIMSELF IN THE LAW

Price has spent all but five of his 42 years in law working in the New York City courts. His father, Saul Price, was a civil judge in Manhattan for 25 years.

“Some people think that’s why I became a judge,” said Price in an interview. In fact, his career in law was an afterthought, he said. “The first time I did well in school was when I started to study law.” Only then did he decide to make a career of it.

After earning his law degree from New York Law School in 1964, Price spent the next five years in private practice. He took his first job in the courts in 1969, when Manhattan Justice Harry W. Davis hired him as his law secretary, a job he kept for seven years, followed by a four-year stint as chief law assistant for the civil courts citywide.

In 1980, Price won election to the Manhattan Civil Court, and a year later, was appointed an acting justice of the Supreme Court in the Bronx, where he has handled a mostly criminal caseload ever since. He won election to his seat in 2002.

In 1990, Price, whose first marriage ended in divorce, married Laura Shapiro, a partner with the Manhattan law firm McAloon & Friedman. One of her chief clients is the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, a job that entails defending the city against medical malpractice suits. Ironically, Price himself gained a bit of notoriety on the opposite side of a tort suit against the city when a jury awarded him $1.7 million in 1997 for injuries he sustained in an auto accident that he blamed on a pothole. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani publicly rebuked him for that.

Separately, Price has gained a reputation off the bench for giving back to the community through his participation in educational outreach programs and in leadership positions in several dozen civic and bar groups, including a stint as president of the American Judges Association. Lists of the articles he has published, task forces and commissions on which he has served, and seminars and conferences where he has spoken fill a seven-page resume. It is a document that portrays Price as indefatigable in his contributions to the community and the bar, and as a somewhat idiosyncratic, one-man Rainbow Coalition.

He is a member of the Puerto Rican Bar Association, the Black Bar Association of Bronx County, the Jewish Lawyers Guild and the National Organization of Women. He has served as treasurer, member of the board, and chair of the gender bias committee for the Bronx Women’s Bar Association; director, chair and vice-president of the Metropolitan Women’s Bar Association; and he’s a longtime member of the New York Women’s Bar Association and the National Association of Women Judges.

Price was chair of the gender fairness commission of the Women’s Bar Association of the State of New York when Lenore Kramer was president of the group. A personal injury attorney with Kramer & Dunleavy in lower Manhattan, Kramer insisted that she sees nothing odd about Price’s affinity for women’s bar associations.

“Judge Price happens to be someone who has fully immersed himself in this cause. He feels very comfortable. Maybe some men don’t feel comfortable,” said Kramer. “I don’t question his motivation. It’s a good cause, and it’s great that he wants to do it.”

A PARADOX — AND UNORTHODOX

On the bench, one of Price’s notable quirks is his tendency to impose what one of the defense attorneys who requested anonymity called “appalling sentences from a defense lawyer’s point of view.” He’s a “hangman,” said the other anonymous defense attorney. “His reputation is that he tries to give a fair trial, but if you’re convicted, you’re going to get the max.”

Appellate courts have periodically agreed that Price’s sentences are over the top. Since the start of 2004, the First Department, which covers Manhattan and the Bronx, has modified a total of 27 criminal sentences that it deemed excessive. Three were Price’s. No other judge had more than one.

In a 2005 case, People v. Ingram, involving a mother convicted of a first-degree assault on her child in what the defense characterized as a “shaken baby” case, Price’s 12-year sentence was cut to six by the appellate court. Attorneys from The Bronx Defenders represented Monique Ingram in that case. Commenting on the sentence that Price imposed, Jaros said, “My impulse is that on that type of case, that is extremely high.”

But Jaros disputed the suggestion that Price is consistently harsh in his sentencing. He cautioned against “cherry-picking cases” to support generalizations about a judge as multifaceted as Price.

“He might give someone a steep sentence,” Jaros conceded. “But if there’s a constitutional problem, he would be just as inclined to overturn the entire conviction.”

RAISING THE PROSECUTORIAL BAR

While defense attorneys have criticized some of Price’s sentences, prosecutors took exception earlier this year in the case of Scott Ortiz, a 45-year-old heroin user with 19 convictions on his record for drug offenses, burglaries, and other crimes. After his conviction in Price’s court for yet another burglary, prosecutors sought a life sentence for Ortiz under the persistent violent felon law, a statute that Price said he was willing to apply — but only if prosecutors could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant qualified.

Prosecutors insisted that the lower “preponderance of the evidence” standard of proof is all that the statute requires. But Price was persuaded that the constitutionality of the New York law had been called into question by several recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions. That stance prompted the Bronx district attorney to seek a writ of prohibition from the First Appellate Department. The appellate court ruled in Matter of Johnson v. Price that the judge had not acted in excess of his authority, so the writ of prohibition was unwarranted. But the court concluded that he had committed trial error and reversed his decision in that particular case.

“It would have been easier for a judge simply to hold to a preponderance of the evidence standard and not do anything to suggest that there is any constitutional interest at stake,” said Jaros. “But Judge Price was perfectly willing to say there were some constitutional issues, and he would use his discretion to ensure to the best of his ability that certain constitutional rights were respected.”

Even under the higher burden of proof, prosecutors succeeded in proving to Price’s satisfaction that Ortiz qualified for treatment as a persistent violent felon. He was sentenced in April to 15-years-to-life in prison.

Price discounts the suggestion that he’s much different from other judges, or that he goes out of his way to take on issues that others would be inclined to overlook. “I’m doing my job. That’s all I’m doing,” he said. “I am an active judge, so getting reversed, affirmed, modified, getting sentences reduced — it’s part of the job.”