A Westchester judge is set to be censured for trying to get favorable outcomes for acquaintances, communicating with parties outside of the courtroom and appearing biased against district attorney prosecutors.
Mount Vernon City Court Judge Nichelle Johnson provided legal advice to people in two cases she presided over, helped a neighbor dismiss a traffic ticket and yelled at prosecutors from the bench between 2022 and 2024, according to a complaint from the New York Commission on Judicial Conduct made public Tuesday.
While presiding over a landlord-tenant dispute in 2022, Johnson called the tenant to direct her to pay her landlord “quickly” to avoid eviction, which upset the landlord’s attorney, who told the judge, “it was improper for the court to call a litigant to give legal advice.” At that point, Johnson apologized and said she just wanted to be sure the tenant understood what to do.
On another occasion, Johnson unknowingly explained to a defendant how to get her impounded car released. The judge was speaking to her court officer, who had the defendant on speaker phone, and did not report the interaction after realizing the defendant was on the line.
Twice, Johnson’s actions resulted in a ticket being dismissed or a judgement vacated: The commission’s complaint says she passed notes to a court clerk instructing that a neighbor’s traffic ticket be dismissed, and, on a case where she knew the attorneys for both parties, acted in ways that resulted in a $750 default judgement against a contracting corporation being vacated.
On two separate occasions, Johnson yelled “at length” at prosecutors from the district attorney’s office. In 2023, she yelled at a prosecutor on a case where a defendant was accused of having a fake license plate, whose attorney asked about the release of his cell phone and car, which had been confiscated by the government.
When the prosecutor began responding to the defense attorney, Johnson jumped in, yelling “that the company impounding the vehicle was making thousands of dollars keeping the defendant’s car, which was a ‘God damn racket,’ and that the defendant ‘should get the damn things today,’” according to the complaint. She said the DA’s office wouldn’t release the phone and car because they “don’t give a damn about what the judge says.”
Later on, when apologizing to the prosecutor, Johnson explained that her statements were not directed at him “in particular” and that he should not “take it personally,” because her comments were directed at the district attorney’s office generally. In another case later that year, Johnson shouted extensively at a prosecutor from the district attorney’s office because the lawyer objected to a ruling she’d made.
Johnson said she was “experiencing significant professional stress,” and workplace issues in 2023, such as the court building needing repairs, a lack of sufficient staffing, and deaths of participants in the drug court, which she said “adversely impacted her behavior in court.”
The judge said she now recognizes that she should have sought assistance to manage these stressors.
Johnson has agreed to her censure, acknowledged her conduct was improper and pledged to take extra care to abide by her ethical obligations, the Commission on Judicial Conduct said. She has also completed five pertinent programs offered by the Office of Court Administration and the University of California Berkeley Law School.
“We trust that respondent has learned from this experience and in the future will act in strict accordance with her obligation to abide by all the Rules Governing Judicial Conduct,” the commission’s complaint says.
“Leveraging judicial office for the benefit of friends leads to a dual system of justice – one for the well-connected, and one for everyone else,” said Robert Tembeckjian, the commission’s administrator. “Judge Johnson’s acceptance of responsibility for this and other misconduct, and her efforts to improve by taking several remedial courses, are noteworthy.”
Johnson was admitted to practice law in New York State in 1995. She was appointed to the Mount Vernon City Court bench in April 2016 to fill a vacancy and elected to a full term in November 2016.
Her current term is set to expire on Dec. 31.
