by Richard W. Millar, Jr.

I have written these columns for over twenty years, and I thought by now nothing would surprise me. I also thought I was at least relatively current in what I will call, for lack of a better description, “behavioral language.”

I was wrong.

I am not only out of touch, I am, perhaps, irretrievably out of touch.

To be specific, if someone made reference to a humming sound, I would think of hummingbirds or maybe singers or even possibly, as a last resort given my age, defective hearing aids. It would never have occurred to me that such a reference might be offensive or cause for removal from the bench.

That is, of course, until now.

That brings me to one Randy A. Hall, a Justice of the Dickinson Town Court in Broome County, New York and I have no idea where that is. Judge Hall is not a lawyer so I assume that he served in what we might call a Justice of the Peace capacity. He is the subject of a removal “Determination” by the State of New York Commission on Judicial Conduct.

I don’t know if statistics are kept on the length of judicial tenure, but he took office in January and by the end of March all of his cases were reassigned which may rate at least a footnote in the Guinness Book of World Records.

There were four “charges” against him, which I summarize: (1) asserting his judicial position in an interaction with the police; (2) sexual harassment towards his co-judge and court staff; (3) conveying the impression of prejudgment of cases before him; and (4) inappropriate Facebook postings.

“Humming sounds” comes under number 2.

The first charge claims that Judge Hall got into a dispute with another man over, if you can believe it, a particular gas pump at a Binghamton gas station. Judge Hall called 911, reporting that he had been threatened. The local Sheriff’s office responded. In his 911 conversation, and with the deputy, Judge Hall liberally feathered his story with references to the fact he was a judge whilst asking that the other disputant be charged. It didn’t work and both he and the other man left without further ado.

The third charge claimed that remarks he made in court to criminal defendants could reasonably be taken as indicative that he had prejudged their cases.

The second charge concerns several instances which are related more by theme than anything else. One could be described as the old “help me zip up my robe” trick which was played on a female clerk whom he asked to help him zip up his old “high school graduation gown that he wished to use as a judicial robe.” It “appeared to be too small or tight for him and could not be zipped past his midsection.” You can guess the rest. The clerk was “very uncomfortable.”

He tried the same trick on his female “co-judge” who “sternly declined.” Later, however, on another day when she wore a leopard print mask (during Covid) he complimented it and asked if it matched her underwear. She “responded in a stern tone demanding that [he] step back.”

On still another occasion, when the same female clerk was helping him make travel arrangements, “he laughed and stated that women do not need men like men need women and added ‘you know it when you hear the humming.’” The clerk “understood [the statement] to be a reference to a vibrator . . . which made her very uncomfortable.”

In open court, Judge Hall told his court clerk (a man) a “crude and inappropriate joke . . . involving a farmer, marijuana, and sexual intercourse with a pig.” Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for column purposes, the actual joke was not provided in the Opinion and I don’t recall one with all three of those components.

In March, shortly before Judge Hall’s cases were taken from him, the two clerks were in their office and the male clerk asked the female clerk if she needed help with a file. She replied “that she had already done the work,” concluding with “I don’t need you.” Judge Hall in chambers overheard this exchange and asked the male clerk “if he usually hears a loud humming sound when she says that.” The male clerk, also believing the reference was to a vibrator, told Judge Hall that he should not say things like that, to which the judge said he was just joking.

The Fourth Count involved, among other things, a Facebook posting by Hall on his personal page to the effect that his “bucket list” included “sneezing and break[ing] wind just as you reach happing ending.”

Unsurprising, the decision to remove him was unanimous which probably was not the happy ending he envisioned.

Richard W. Millar, Jr. is tired and retired. He can be reached at dickmillar9@gmail.com.