Judges Divorced From Justice: Is a Reckoning Coming to the New York Office of Court Administration?
How long can OCA Ignore "Murderous" Brooklyn Family Court Judge Eric Pitchal, "Crooked" Divorce Judge Ron Castorina, and "Jumping" Judge Judy McMahon?
By Richard Luthmann
Ella Vitalis, a one-year-old from Brooklyn, will never see her second birthday. The cold factual narrative isn’t merely about her untimely demise but about the system that arguably played a part in her tragic fate. It’s a bleak reflection on the power wielded by the New York State Office of Court Administration (OCA) and its effect - or lack thereof.
Ella’s tale is stained with documented abuse and a tragic end. Before she breathed her last, the child was on life support for five grueling days, marked by a brain bleed, fractured skull, and other grave injuries.
The day before she was found grievously injured, Brooklyn Family Court Judge Erik S. Pitchal had decided she should stay with her troubled parents - Lafayette Browne and Johnson Vitalis- despite their more than documented history of abuse.
Earlier, a domestic incident had sent Ella and her elder sibling to the hospital, subsequently being placed in relative foster care. Yet, replete with allegations and evidence of harm, the past didn’t deter Judge Pitchal. On June 15, 2023, he decreed that the children should return to their parents. This decision starkly opposed Children’s Services’ request to maintain the safety of the status quo.
A series of missed follow-ups by the parents did little to change Pitchal’s mind.
Vitalis’ mother, Browne, allegedly attributed the fatal injuries to Ella drinking “too much milk.” No arrests have been made despite police investigating Vitalis’ death as a homicide.
Ella’s death, while heartbreaking, isn’t an isolated incident of questionable judgments. It pulls into focus the broader oversight (or lack thereof) of OCA, the body entrusted with ensuring the judiciary upholds its sworn duty.
OCA can remove a judge from the bench based on serious allegations confirmed by an investigation by their Inspector General.
What is more serious than a dead child in Brooklyn Family Court? Or perjury by a judge? Or a scheme to violate criminal defendant’s rights in favor of the local district attorney? Or bullying of 9-11 victims and responders, reporters and the sources, and court employees and personnel?
Sadly, OCA often looks the other way when Judges engage in heinous, brazen, and even criminal activity.
Staten Island has Divorce Judge Ronald Castorina, Jr. Not only has he bullied 9-11 victims out of their compensation fund payments, but it is common knowledge he secured his judgeship by committing perjury at a 2018 grand jury.
Castorina is openly gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with it.
According to sources within OCA, they have complete reports, knowledge, transcripts of these proceedings, witness statements, and even Spectrum NY1 News broadcasts. Yet, OCA has done nothing. Neither has the office of NYS Attorney General Leticia James.
John A., whose name has been changed for his protection, has a current matrimonial case before Judge Castorina. “This guy is the worst of the worst. He’s a bully and a crook. And it makes sense now that I found out he committed perjury to get on the bench. Why should anyone follow his orders? They are illegitimate, and he is illegitimate.”
Not to be outdone, OCA has repeatedly turned a blind eye to Staten Island’s “McMahon Inc.” Former Administrative Judge Judith McMahon was removed from that post in 2017 because of misconduct, but she remains on the bench, re-elected to a new term fourteen-year term by Staten Island’s uni-party political machine.
Together with her husband and Staten Island District Attorney Michael Edward McMahon, the two shamelessly steer “The Rock’s” money and politics from their public offices, supposedly above the political fray.
Tapes from 2017 show Judge McMahon shepherded warrants away from “defense-oriented judges” in a scheme to pad her DA husband’s conviction stats. In the process, the duo violated the constitutional rights of dozens, if not hundreds, some of whom are still languishing in New York State prison.
McMahon Inc. employs brazen, thug-like tactics like strong-arming court employees and the press and offering up political rivals to special state and federal prosecutors based on unfounded charges.
Is there any question why OCA has turned an eye on “murderous” Judge Pitchal in Brooklyn? Because OCA is just another “virtue-signalling,” taxpayer-funded political arm of government that selectively protects judicial criminals.
OCA must be shuttered, defunded, and rebuilt from the ground up. Don’t believe me? A case in point is the matter of former Brooklyn Surrogate’s Court Judge Harriet Thompson.
In 2021, Thompson was accused of making vile racist and anti-gay remarks and agreed to step down from the bench earlier this year — claiming a shoulder injury had left her “unable to fight” misconduct allegations.
Thompson faced charges for alleged biased and “inappropriate comments” toward co-workers. In addition to retirement, she agreed to never again seek office as a judge, according to the state Commission on Judicial Conduct (CJC).
She was accused of saying that homosexuality is an “abomination,” claiming that Hispanic people have “deceitful traits,” and called four other judges “gay racist faggots” who were “all fucking each other.”
OCA suspended Thompson — a Surrogate Court judge since 2019 who previously served as a civil court judge — in December 2021 after the inspector general for OCA “substantiated” misconduct claims against her.
So, let’s get the OCA scorecard straight.
It’s OK to bully reporters and their court employee sources in violation of the First Amendment. It’s fine to bilk 9-11 victims and responders out of their protected pensions. It’s more than allowable to violate the criminal rights of the accused by putting your thumb on the scales of justice during warrant applications. It’s permissible to perjure yourself to get to the bench. And you can let infants get murdered with impunity once you are on the bench.
But you call somebody a “fag,” and you get the “judicial death penalty.”
Good job, New York Office of Court Administration. You have single-handedly demonstrated how to ruin the world’s foremost legal system, rendering it devoid of justice or common sense.
The New York Courts are without any semblance of legal or moral authority when they cannot and will not police their own crooked, corrupt, and criminal judges. The system’s responses are fragmented. On the one hand, biases and remarks face swift action, yet alleged perjury, intimidation, and questionable judgments remain unchecked.
In their majestic structures, the New York courts are meant to be bastions of justice, fairness, and hope. But stories like Ella Vitalis’ cast long, unnerving shadows.
To term it a crisis would be an understatement. Where can litigants go for justice when their legal system has so blatantly failed them?
Is it time for vigilanteism to return? Is it time to round up posses for dispensing the justice that Judges Pitchal, Castorina, and McMahon cannot?
It’s a reckoning, a hard look at a system that, in its quest to uphold the law, has lost sight of truth and integrity.
The endgame is apparent. For the New York Office of Court Administration, it’s time for heads to roll and then rebuild. Anything less makes the OCA a useless appendage that should easily be lopped off from the bloated sinews of New York State spending.
Why would New Yorker taxpayers continue to pay for OCA to manage a legal system to stop crime when it can’t even purge the criminals in its own ranks? Stop paying to defend these crooks, or at least strip them of their judicial immunity so they have to pay the price of their transgressions, like every other common criminal.
Richard Luthmann is a writer, commentator, and investigative journalist with degrees from Columbia University and the University of Miami. A transplanted New Yorker, Luthmann is a member of the National Writers Union now living in Southwest Florida.
Check him out on Muck Rack.
“I am a journalist who writes about justice, the courts, government officials, prisons, and reform. You find some questionable players in all these places and often outright crooks. Exposing these bottom feeders from the outside is sometimes the only way to make them pay the price for their injustice, misdeeds, and tyranny.”
“I often use satire and opinion to make my point. I have already been told to ‘stop writing about the Government’ by the U.S. Government, so I must be doing something right.”
“If you’re a victim of the system, maybe the press is the right forum for you. If you have experienced injustice and are tired of dropping tens of thousands of dollars without results, maybe it’s time to try the digital pen.”
Contact Richard Luthmann at 239-631-5957 or richard.luthmann@protonmail.com.
"Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.” (Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, more obscure than public opinion, and more deceptive than the whole political system.)
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
The news media is a critical check on the powerful, serving as a watchdog to hold elected officials and other public figures accountable for their actions. The media was first called the Fourth Estate in 1821 by Edmund Burke, who wanted to point out the power of the press. The press plays a crucial role in providing citizens with access to information about what is happening in government and by shining a light on corruption, abuse of power, and other forms of wrongdoing.
Good stuff !!!!!!! Keep it coming