Village Justice candidate Ali Jaffery (left) and his former law partner Matthew Herlihy (right.)
In the early evening of April 15, we received a proposed Guest Editorial from attorney Matthew Herlihy, Ali Jaffery’s former law partner, sharply criticizing Village Justice Sam Watkins for his decision to set a $500 bail for a defendant charged with Attempted Burglary in the 2d Degree.
Ali Jaffery is, of course, running for Village Justice on the Democratic Party and Working Families Party tickets, against incumbent Justice Sam Watkins, who is running on the Voice of Croton ticket.
The defendant, 30 year old Croton resident Pablo Castillo, is accused of an attempted break-in at a village home early in the morning of April 15, which reportedly caused a great deal of fear and trauma to the residents.
As some readers will recall, Herlihy earlier published a Guest Editorial in the Chronicle endorsing Jaffery, and also defending Jaffery’s behavior in a case he was involved in that led to him being sanctioned for misconduct by a federal magistrate judge.
At first we hesitated about Herlihy’s newest proposed Guest Editorial, because the very first sentence made clear it was a virulent attack on Sam Watkins:
“If you are a resident of the Village of Croton-on-Hudson, you should not sleep safely with Judge Watkins on the bench.”
(Herlihy also sent his piece to The Gazette, which published it this week as a letter “To the editor.”)
The idea that Justice Watkins, who has served on the Croton bench for 20 years, was a danger to our community seemed highly inflammatory; we also took note of the fact that Herlihy is a strong partisan for Ali Jaffery in the sharply contested judicial race. Nevertheless, the Chronicle publishes a wide diversity of views and does not censor, edit, or cut Guest Editorials due to their political content. We told Herlihy that given the serious accusations he was making against Watkins, we could not in fairness publish the piece without giving Watkins the right of a reply in the same space.
We made it clear that we would publish the piece even if Watkins declined to respond; Herlihy agreed with this arrangement. Watkins did provide a comment and the Guest Editorial was published soon afterwards.
Since the Guest Editorial was published, on April 16, it has been the subject of a great deal of discussion, both online and privately. A number of commenters have called it a “hit piece” due to its sharp attack on Watkins. The discussions have been focused on two main questions:
First, does Ali Jaffery, as the candidate of the Working Families Party, which has a strong pro-bail reform stance, agree with Herlihy’s position that Justice Watkins set bail too low?
Second, did Jaffery have any role in the preparation of Herlihy’s Guest Editorial, either in its conception, its writing, or in any other way?
When we first posed those questions to Jaffery yesterday, he refused to answer either one, adding that he thought the Chronicle and its editor were biased against him. But in a further effort to be fair, we asked him again today to respond, and he provided us with the following statement:
“To answer your second question directly: no, Mr. Herlihy and I did not coordinate or collaborate on his guest editorial in any way. He wrote the piece entirely independently. While Mr. Herlihy is a village resident and my former law partner, he has no official or unofficial role in my campaign. Nobody speaks for me or my campaign other than myself. For full transparency regarding my campaign structure, I do not currently have a dedicated campaign manager, but I am coordinating with Nora Nicholson in her capacity as the campaign manager for the rest of the Croton Dems slate.
“Regarding your first question, I appreciate your commitment to making my ethical rationale clear to your readers. Under the New York State Rules Governing Judicial Conduct, judicial candidates are strictly prohibited from making statements that commit, or appear to commit, the candidate with respect to issues, controversies, or cases that are likely to come before the court. Commenting on the substance of this editorial or making pledges about how I would rule on matters like bail reform would violate those ethical obligations, which exist to guarantee an impartial judiciary. Those same rules also prohibit sitting judges from commenting about pending or impending proceedings in any court within the United States or its territories.”
We had also asked Jaffery if he would be willing to comment on the generic issues of bail reform in New York state, but he did not respond to that invitation.
We have asked Matthew Herlihy the same question we put to Jaffery—whether the two of them collaborated in any way on the Guest Editorial—but have not heard back yet. If and when we do, we will update this article accordingly. In our request to Herlihy, we pointed that the Chronicle has a responsibility to ensure the integrity of what we publish and guard against being used as a vehicle for behind the scenes machinations.
In the preparation of this followup report, we spoke to three local attorneys about the issues involved. All three asked for anonymity, on the grounds that they are active professionally in the community and did not want to be seen as publicly partisan in an election campaign.
All three attorneys told us flatly that they did not believe Jaffery’s denial that he was involved with Herlihy’s Guest Editorial. “I don’t think anyone believes that Herlihy is freelancing,” one said. Another attorney commented: “You don’t have a buddy attack-dog the adversary,” adding that “This isn’t how it goes.”
The attorneys had varying views on the wisdom of New York’s bail reform laws, which were strongly supported by the Working Families Party, along with other judicial reforms, when they were before the legislature earlier in this decade. Yet all of them told us that there was a clear rationale for the new laws.
“New York State is not like many states,” one said. “In New York, the purpose of bail is to ensure the defendant’s return to court on the next scheduled date. Bail is NOT punitive.” This attorney commented, “Even prior to bail reform, the bail set by Sam Watkins [in the Castillo case] would have been normal,” adding that “many judges” would have released the defendant on his own recognizance rather than set bail at all.
One attorney suggested to us that Croton Democrats have made a mistake by endorsing Jaffery as their nominee, because he has “totally failed the judicial stability test,” adding that the village could have appointed Jaffery as an Associate Village Justice and given him some training before he ascended to the top spot on the bench, after Sam Watkins retired.
And still another local lawyer commented that while Jaffery may have been correct in declining to comment on a current criminal case, there was nothing in the ethical guidelines preventing him from speaking out about bail reform in general, perhaps in line—or not—with the position already taken by the Working Families Party.
“The defendant should not be a pawn in an election battle,” that attorney concluded. “Nobody but Sam Watkins has made that point.”
It is only April, and it seems clear that the battle for who becomes our next Village Justice is likely to rage on until Election Day, November 3. The Chronicle does not endorse candidates, but serves as a platform for the candidates and their supporters—and, as in this case, their opponents—to publish their views, whatever they might be.
Update: We have now received a response from Matthew Herlihy to our question of whether he and Ali Jaffery collaborated in any way on the Guest Editorial sharply criticizing Sam Watkins. Here is his reply:
“I absolutely did not speak with Ali before writing my editorial. My opinion stands alone and, anyone who knows me would agree, I don’t let anyone impact my opinion one way or another.”
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Just an additional comment here. Matthew Herlihy did not mention, in his Guest Editorial for the Chronicle, that he was Ali Jaffery's former law partner and a partisan of his campaign for Village Justice. The Chronicle had to add that context on our end. Likewise, Herlihy's letter to The Gazette includes no such very relevant disclosure. The Chronicle will not publish any further pieces by Herlihy on the Village Justice campaign.
There is in this a certain smell, and it unfortunately resembles the national politics. If this is the opening bow of this candidate, one doesn’t want to imagine what follows. These young men misread the community, and I venture a guess that their inflated egos convinced them that they could effect a takeover here. This makes me suspicious of the leadership of the local Democratic structure, as well. Is the operating principle here that “modernization” is an irrefutable good?