Town Judge Richard Snyder carries bottled water from a distribution center on Feb. 20, 2016, at the Petersburgh Town Hall in Petersburgh, N.Y. (Cindy Schultz/The Albany Times Union via AP).
A now-former judge in upstate New York is out of a job after his successful efforts to evade jury duty caught the attention of judicial ethics authorities in the Empire State.
Richard T. Snyder served as a Petersburgh Town Court justice for roughly a decade, with his final four-year term slated to end in December 2025. In fact, he is still listed as one of two such justices on the tiny municipality’s court website as of this writing.
Snyder, however, recently resigned his position, in part because he avoided jury duty by inveighing against defendants in general and broadly asserting they all “did something wrong.”
In November 2024, the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct served a written complaint on the Rensselaer County jurist. In December 2024, Snyder and the commission agreed he would turn in his robes in exchange for the disciplinary matter being shelved.
Late last month, the commission announced the resolution of the matter in a terse, two-page decision and order.
