Judge In Ethics Trouble Over Hispanic Slur (MORE, CLICK HERE)

Local Judge Lands in Ethics Trouble Over Alleged Slur on Hispanic Lawyers
New York Lawyer - February 14, 2008
By Charles Toutant - New Jersey Law Journal

NEWARK -- An Essex County family court judge is facing an ethics inquiry - and perhaps a chewing out by the chief justice - for asking a Hispanic lawyer in open court, "When did you become an illegal alien?"

The lawyer is Ivette Ramos Alvarez, immediate past president of the Hispanic Bar Association of New Jersey, who has filed a complaint against Superior Court Judge James Convery with the Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct.

On top of that, the Hispanic Bar is protesting the judge's remark to Chief Justice Stuart Rabner, asking him to "undertake immediate and aggressive action to insure that comments by members of the judiciary, either on the record or off the record, . . . never again fall outside the boundaries of common sense and propriety."

Rabner has agreed to meet with the bar group, says its current president, Milagros Camacho of Camacho, Gardner & Associates in West Orange.

Covery's Jan. 4 remark, captured on video camera, came during questioning of Alvarez on her client's failure to produce his annual Social Security Administration account statement, which the client claimed he hadn't received.

According to Camacho, who said she has seen a DVD recording of the hearing, Convery asked others in the courtroom if they had received their Social Security statements, and they said yes. When Alvarez said she had not received her own Social Security statement for three or four years, Convery asked her, "When did you become an illegal alien?"

Alvarez responded that the question was inappropriate and then left the courtroom. Her complaint to the ACJC followed, and the family court case was assigned to another judge.

Convery could not be reached for comment on Tuesday, a court holiday.

Alvarez, of Einhorn, Harris, Ascher, Barbarito, Frost & Ironson in Denville, declined comment through an assistant.

Camacho called the judge's remark "disturbing, saying that the term "illegal alien," though not discriminatory per se, perpetuates stereotypes when used arbitrarily against Latinos, regardless of citizenship status.

She added, "As an association, we are bound to represent all Hispanic attorneys and we found this statement to be offensive and disturbing. We believe no insult is too small to respond to because small insults become large insults and eventually they become avalanches."

Camacho said that solos and small-firm lawyer might be less inclined to stand up to such remarks than Alvarez, a well-established attorney at a good-sized firm.

Convery, appointed to the bench in 1993 and tenured in 2000, is one of the least popular judges in his vicinage, according to the Law Journal's 2005 Superior Court Judicial Survey. Lawyers ranked him 43rd out of 48 in freedom from racial and ethnic bias, and dead last in courtesy to lawyers and litigants.