J. Marshall Ayres, once a justice for the Town of Conklin in Broome County, at oral arguments before the Court of Appeals in September 2017 challenging a state judicial watchdog’s recommendation to remove him from the bench. Photo: New York Court of Appeals.
A Conklin town justice who used his prestige to try and fix his daughter’s traffic ticket for driving while talking on a cellphone is just one example of an enduring issue for the state’s court system: how to deliver justice in the state’s vast rural areas and ensure its judges are qualified, capable and adhere to high standards, even if they aren’t required to be lawyers.
And while numerous reform efforts for the state’s town and village courts, devised in a previous century for a far different New York state, have failed to make lasting systemic changes, observers of the state’s judiciary say times are changing.
