Judge Kaye And Four Of Her Justices
Should Return To Law School

The question before the Court was not about what the law should
have said, or meant to say, but rather what it actually said.

As time passes, it appears more and more obvious that the old expression, “A fish rots from the head down,” is quite applicable to the New York State Court System. Clearly, the disastrous condition of New York’s state courts flows from the disintegration of the Court of Appeals under the misguiding hand of Chief Judge Judith Kaye.

For some time now we have been questioning the Chief Judge’s willingness to tolerate, in fact, encourage numerous instances of ethical misconduct, and outright corruption, particularly in the Matrimonial Part of State Supreme Court which, here in Westchester, has truly become a Rico-type enterprise between certain judges and a particular clique of attorneys.

Additionally, she has condoned such outrageous maneuvers as were pulled off by Democrat Jonathan Lippman and Republican Joseph Alessandro in 2005 when they cross-endorsed each other to totally lockup their election to the Supreme Court.

And, speaking about cross-endorsements, Judge Kaye appears to have no problem seating Supreme and County Court Judges Judge Kaye And Four Of Her Justices Should Return To Law School The question before the Court was not about what the law should have said, or meant to say, but rather what it actually said.
who have paid thousands of dollars to political operatives such as Giulio Cavallo, to buy the Independence Party’s cross-endorsement, and thereby purchase a judgeship.

So much for the unabated corruption; Judge Kaye apparently prefers to remain in denial for the next nineteen months.

However, competence, and a correct understanding of the separation of powers between the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial branches of government, as set out by both the United States, and New York State Constitutions, is so essential, and fundamental to the role and function of the State’s highest tribunal, that it is painful to witness the failure of that Court to lawfully and appropriately deal with cases before it.

In our March 29th issue in The Advocate column entitled Only The Legislature, Not The Courts, May Enact
Law, the failure of the Court of Appeals to deal with the abuse of the Depraved Indifference Murder Statute, by prosecutors for some forty years was thoroughly exposed.

Now, that same Court, once again, is attempting to re-write the law, this time the statute that was enacted in 1996 prohibiting the sending of e-mails to minors “depicting nudity or sexual activity.”

Despite the fact that the Appellate Division, State Supreme Court, Second Department had overturned the conviction of Jeffrey Koslow for violation of the statute, because his transmissions to an undercover agent, pretending to be a fourteen–year-old, contained no images, no graphic, or pictorial material, the Court of Appeals, last week decided to expand the ordinary dictionary defi-nition of the word DEPICT, (commonly
defined in the dictionary as “to represent by drawing, painting) to now include the use of words. In effect, for whatever reasons, political, personal, or other, the State’s highest court once again has rewritten the law.

What makes the Court’s decision all the more inappropriate, and egregious, an invasion of the powers reserved for the State Legislature, is the fact that just a few weeks ago, the State Senate, and Assembly, passed, and Governor Spitzer signed into law, a revision of the original statute enacted eleven years ago, because on the
heels of the Koslow decision from the Appellate Division, the legislators realized that the language of their initial act did not specifically include words.

Dissenting Justices Theodore T. Jones, JR., and Robert S. Smith must be distinguished from Kaye and the four other justices whose action was again misguided.

Speaking of the 1996 statute, under which Koslow was convicted, Smith, in explaining the Dissent, said, “…if the Legislature intended to reach both pictures and words the obvious way to do so was to say depicts or describes.”

The revised law, recently passed says, “depicts or describes.” The Court’s ruling, in fact, is Constitutionally ex post facto; something every first-year law student would recognize.