New York Judge Resigns amid Investigation into Alleged Jan. 6 Role

[MerrilyMerrily]

18. There was a NYT series about upstate NY town and village judges

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/25/nyregion/25courts.html
"In Tiny Courts of NY, Abuses of Law and Power" - September 25, 2006

I don't have access now (dropped my subscription) but I read the series at the time. I had lived in a tiny town jurisdiction for 8 years by then, but I had not known that there was no educational requirement for candidates at all, but there WAS a "judging for dummies" manual provided to the winners, which many "judges" didn't bother to read completely. The series provided several examples of judges making stuff up, doing all kinds of things that were illegal EXCEPT for them, and blatantly treating "certain" people with egregious unfairness. The articles concluded that the state judicial system was in the process of figuring out how to put a stop to all that.

Just a couple of weeks after the series came out, a lady knocked on my door to tell me she was running for town judge. I don't recall her occupation, but she was not a lawyer. I asked her if she had read the NYT articles. She looked like she had swallowed a lemon and said yes, then she left. She was elected town judge a few weeks after that.

This guy is not an anomaly, but the fact that he actually got in trouble bad enough to make him resign, for acting in a way that used to have no recourse, cheers me up.