New York Supreme Court Justice Erin Gall on July 2, 2022 (New York State Commision on Judicial Conduct).
An upstate New York Supreme Court justice who was recorded on bodycam footage repeatedly referencing her judicial status, even threatening to “shoot” Black teens who showed up at a July 2022 high school graduation party she attended at a friend’s house with both her husband and son before it devolved into chaos late at night, should be removed from office, a judicial conduct panel has recommended.
In a Monday statement, the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct said that Oneida County-based jurist Erin Gall should lose her job for “a racially offensive, profane, prolonged public diatribe outside a high school graduation party, during which she repeatedly invoked her judicial office, threatened gun violence, and both criticized and pledged favored treatment for the police” by telling responding law enforcement, “[y]ou know I am on your side.”
While Gall is a state justice, readers should be aware that the state supreme court is the trial court and the New York Court of Appeals is the highest court — that is, the court one would normally think of as supreme.
The commission said that Gall disqualified herself as judge by what she said and did when the New Hartford party, which had started on the evening of July 1, 2022, and continued into the night, went off the rails after midnight.
According to the commission’s determination, Gall testified that though there was a bartender and a keg at the party, she “did not consume any alcohol at the party, did not take any prescription medications or illicit drugs before or during the party, and was sober during the entirety of the party and throughout the events of July 2, 2022.”
The documents said Gall defended herself against the allegations in three ways, one of which was to say her actions were “the result of extreme distress triggered by [redacted] associated with an assault” against her when she was a freshman at Boston College in 1990, and another of which was to say that she was “emotionally distraught” upon seeing her husband and son “attacked” at the party by “individuals whom respondent and her family members had never seen before and whom they believed were uninvited.”
Cellphone video included as an exhibit showed the fracas unfold, with one teen apparently shouting “WorldStar.”
Most of the video exhibits are blurred, seemingly to protect the identities of individuals who are either not clearly adults or not relevant to the case at hand.
But a few recordings after the fighting subsided showed Gall at the scene talking to cops and remarking about the Black teens by saying “they don’t look that smart” and “they’re not going to business school, that’s for sure.”
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The panel said that amid the melee one of the teens lost a car key and was looking for it later, but Gall didn’t want that to happen, and demanded the group be “arrested.”
By this point, Gall was in contact with law enforcement and said “when they trespass you can shoot them on the property. I’ll shoot them on the property,” the panel said.
One officer apparently pushed back on the suggestion, referring to Gall as “lady” and “ma’am,” and saying, “This isn’t Texas. You can’t shoot somebody for simply going on your property. . . . Do you hear what you’re saying? You’re all White, privileged people with high-power jobs.”
Gall, the panel said, was not pleased the officer didn’t call her judge.
“Don’t call me ‘Lady.’ ‘Judge.’ It’s ‘Judge,”” documents said. “You guys didn’t really do much.”
“If you’re not invited by a homeowner, it’s still trespassing. I’ve done this for a million years. I’m a lawyer. I’m a judge. I know this,” Gall also said, according to the panel.
Gall, the documents said, was also heard screaming at the teens while repeatedly identifying herself as a judge.
“You got to leave! You’re not going to find your keys. You got to call an Uber and get off the property. That’s what I’m saying. No. Done. You’re done. Done, done, done. Get off the property! And’s that’s from Judge Gall! I’m a f—ing judge!” the panel recounted her words. “And I’m telling you! Get off the f—ing property! No, judge. It’s judge. I could give a f—. . . . I don’t want anyone on the property. If I have to clear it out, I will.”
“Well, you’re going to get in an Uber, buddy, or you’re going to get a cop escort home. That’s how it’s happening. That’s what I’m telling you right now. That’s how I roll. That’s how I roll,” the panel further quoted Gall. “That’s how Mrs. G rolls. That’s how Judge Gall rolls.”
One panelist, Colgate University Prof. Nina Moore, wrote a concurrence (which one other member joined), saying that Gall acknowledged her remarks that the Black teens didn’t look smart and didn’t have a business school in their futures at minimum created an appearance of racial bias. But Moore went much further, writing that Gall’s “that’s how I roll” words were a “mocking blaccent.”
Moore also doubted Gall’s claim that being an assault survivor triggered her more than 30 years later in a “racialized” way.
Black litigants, attorneys, court staff and others who enter a New York state courtroom are entitled to equal justice. They should not have to carry the additional burden of wondering whether their matters will be adjudicated by a judge of sound and sober mind, or a traumatized judge with a proclivity toward racial stereotyping and racially tainted directives. Inexplicably, respondent’s 1990 trauma took the form of racialized behavior on July 2, 2022. Her derisive deployment of Black English (aka “African American vernacular,” “Ebonics,” and “blaccent”) is jolting.
[…]
Judge Gall’s mocking blaccent is in addition to the other racialized behaviors noted in the majority opinion, including her assessment of the four Black male teenagers as less than Business School material and the hint that they could not afford cocaine—reflexive assessments that she made with no personal knowledge whatsoever of the four Black teens. The defense argument that the teens’ behavior was distinctive and merited such harsh judgement is belied by the fact that Judge Gall’s own husband and son had, in her words, just given someone a “smack down,” and at her friend’s party where police officers observed many teens had been drinking or were intoxicated. Critically, respondent’s words on the night of the incident did not pertain to behavior. They expressly targeted physical features. She stated: “They don’t look like they’re that smart.”
The panel as a whole concluded that Gall, rather than “leaving the chaotic situation, for over an hour, […] repeatedly engaged in conduct that violated the Rules,” conduct that was “unbecoming a judge, brought reproach upon the judiciary and irreparably damaged her ability to serve as a judge.”
While the panel recommended removal from office, Gall’s lawyer said she should at most be sanctioned.
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