Family Court Judge Jill S. Polk admonished by Commission on Judicial Conduct, an organization she once worked for
by Robert Gavin
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| Judge Jill Polk |
The Commission on Judicial Conduct imposed the punishment of admonishment on Judge Jill S. Polk, who began a 10-year term in January 2015. It is the most lenient of the commission’s options to discipline judges; more serious options include censure and removal from the bench.
Polk – a former attorney for the commission based in Albany from 2008 to 2014 – had the secretary, close friend Chara Ritter, do other tasks as well, such as researching options for Polk for vacation rentals, vehicle service, a locksmith and the cost of a landscaper, the commission said. It noted the judge did not in any way coerce the work.
And the commission found that between 2015 and 2017, Polk allowed her daughter to be unsupervised in the courthouse, where the child regularly spoke to court officers as they worked a magnetometer at a security checkpoint. The girl, 12 and then 13 at the time, would innocently ask the officers about items being scanned. Still, the commission noted it was a distraction that impeded the officers' work, which included possible confiscation of weapons and dealing with disputes between nearby Family Court litigants.
Polk, who has served as an acting state Supreme Court justice since 2017, was first accused of the misconduct in September 2019. Represented by attorney Stephen Coffey, the judge disputed allegations of wrongdoing. The commission appointed attorney Michael Hutter, an Albany Law School professor once nominated for the Court of Appeals, to preside over a four-day hearing via video where the judge testified on her own behalf.
In June 2021, Hutter determined Polk violated rules governing judicial conduct. The commission’s administrator, Robert Tembeckjian, recommended that Polk be removed from the bench. Coffey asked for Hutter's determination to be disaffirmed or, in the alternative, a punishment of admonishment be imposed.
"To impose a severe sanction on a hardworking judge who accepted a little help from a close friend where no one, including the state, was negatively affected as a result, would be ludicrous and unwarranted," Coffey stated in a brief to the commission last August.
Polk apologized for her actions when given a chance to speak in October, following Hutter's ruling.
"I should have done it differently," Polk told the commission. She said she initially rejected Ritter's offer to plan the bat mitzvah, but later agreed to it if Ritter did the work off-hours, which did not happen. "It has, you know, it got away from me," she said. "But it wasn't done with any kind of intent to violate any rule. It was done in a compassionate way. It was done in a humanity way and I'm sorry that I didn't recognize it at that time and stop it."
The investigation noted that Polk worked for the commission when it scrutinized two judges for using staff for personal purposes.
The commission went for the lighter sanction. Its determination noted that Polk had no prior disciplinary history and was a relatively new judge at the time of the wrongdoing.
“Although the commission and I disagreed on the appropriate sanction in this case, the commission made clear that it was wrong for Judge Polk to have her court-paid secretary perform extensive acts of personal assistance, using court resources, on court time,” Tembeckjian said in a statement.
“It was also wrong for Judge Polk to allow a security issue to fester, despite specific notice from a ranking officer that her young child’s regular, unsupervised presence at courthouse magnetometers was problematic," Tembeckjian said. "Judge Polk knew better, having been an attorney at the Commission when two other judges were publicly disciplined for similar misconduct.”
In November 2014, Polk, a Niskayuna Democrat and an attorney since 1988, won a three-candidate race over Deanna Siegel and Ursula Hall to win the judgeship.
In its determination, the commission noted that when Polk worked as a commission attorney, it rendered two decisions on judges who used court staff for personal purposes.
Ritter started working as the judge's confidential secretary in January 2015 after interviewing with Polk and Polk's court attorney, Nancy Stroud. Ritter, a former receptionist, taught Stroud's nieces in Hebrew school, the commission's determination said.
According to the determination, the judge, Stroud and Ritter would have lunch daily. The judge planned to have a bat mitzvah for her daughter in the spring of 2016, but did not have a planner, Polk planned to hire a party planner until Ritter offered to do it. Ritter used her court system email to send emails out to vendors. At the end of the email, Ritter was identified as "Secretary to Honorable Jill S. Polk." The address Schenectady County Family Court was included.
"These emails from Ms. Ritter's '@nycourts.gov' email address lent the prestige of judicial office for (Polk's) personal benefit and gave at least the appearance that court resources were being used for (Polk's) personal purposes," the determination said. "All judges must be mindful that court resources are to be used for court purposes and that any appearance that they are not undermines public confidence in the judiciary."
When asked if there were limitations on the work Ritter did for her, Polk responded: "We're friends and we're family and so that's our relationship. And so we have a relationship that is outside of our professional relationship."
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