Metro

City, NYPD unions tell fed panel to keep judge off stop-frisk cases

The Bloomberg administration and the city’s police unions came out firing on Wednesday against Manhattan federal Judge Shira Scheindlin — telling a federal appeals panel it should stand pat with its decision to boot her off the stop-and-frisk cases.

“[The plaintiffs] contend that because the court reassigned the matter based upon misconduct findings, the district judge had a right to notice and the opportunity to be heard. That is not the law,” lawyers for four unions representing 29,000 of the NYPD’s 35,000 cops said in a motion with the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

“The court’s order reassigning the district judge does not constitute a sanction against her, and it does not trigger any right to her personal intervention in the appellate process.”

The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, Detectives Endowment Association, Lieutenants Benevolent Association and Captains’ Endowment Association were responding to legal papers filed on Monday by lawyers for plaintiffs in the cases, which asked the panel to reconsider its stunning Oct. 31 decision to bench Scheindlin on stop-and-frisk.

Judge Shira ScheindlinAP

City Corporation Counsel Michael Cardozo filed a similar brief hours later, saying “the panel appropriately raised very serious concerns about the fairness and impartiality” surrounding the stop-and-frisk cases when it removed Scheindlin.

He also ripped the plaintiffs’ “unprecedented demands that a different three-judge panel review … and hear the merits of the appeal,” adding this demand “should be flatly rebuffed.”

In removing Scheindlin, the panel had found her impartiality “ran afoul” of judicial ethics when she advised lawyers to steer one case to her and gave media interviews in the midst of the non jury trial over which she was presiding.

“During those [media] interviews, the judge boasted about her own courage and fidelity to the rule of law, and deprecated colleagues who, in her view, were afraid to rule against the government,” the police unions’ lawyers wrote. “While no party moved to disqualify the judge, the court properly concluded that these reported statements—which the district judge has never disputed—irretrievably compromised the appearance of impartiality, ‘ran afoul’ of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, and required reassignment of the cases.”

The fight over whether Scheindlin should be reassigned comes as the city is also requesting that the Manhattan appeals court throw out the judge’s ruling against the NYPD’s use of stop-and-frisk in the wake of her stunning removal.

If the Bloomberg administration succeeds before the end of the year, it would amount to an end-run around Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio’s pledge to drop the city’s pending appeal of Scheindlin’s rulings.

Scheindlin in August had ruled stop-and-frisk illegally targeted minorities, and ordered sweeping reforms, including appointment of an outside monitor to rein in the controversial crime-fighting tactic.

Meanwhile, five prominent lawyers from around the country — led by NYU law professor Burt Neuborne — are seeking to reverse Scheindlin’s removal. They filed papers last week saying her disqualification “raises troubling issues,” in part because the appeals judges acted despite the fact that none of the “powerful litigants” involved sought her removal.

The team of legal eagles representing Scheindlin also believes she should have her own day in court to address the panel’s decision to remove her from the case.