A Judge Tried to Get Out of Jury Duty. What He Said Cost Him His Job.

When Richard Snyder was running to be a town justice in tiny Petersburgh, N.Y., in 2013, he told a local news site that he would be fair and honest on the bench. Because he was not a lawyer, he also said he was “looking forward to learning about the law.”

He just learned something about it the hard way.

Mr. Snyder, a Republican, was unopposed in that 2013 race and won it with 329 votes. But in December he resigned after a disciplinary panel found that he had tried to get out of grand jury duty by introducing himself as a town justice and saying he could not be impartial.

“I know they are guilty,” Mr. Snyder said in arguing to be excused, according to a court transcript. Otherwise, he explained, “they would not be in front of me.” (The judge dismissed him and notified the disciplinary panel.)

The remarks, which were made in October 2023 and led to a formal complaint, were a window into the world of New York’s hundreds of village and town courts, where traffic tickets and petty crimes are adjudicated by people who are not always steeped in legal basics.

“There is no place on the bench for someone who so deeply misunderstands the role of a judge and the administration of justice,” Robert Tembeckjian, the administrator of the disciplinary panel, the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, said in a statement.

Mr. Snyder, 68, did not respond to a phone message seeking comment. He earned around $6,000 a year to hear cases on the second and fourth Tuesday each month. His term was scheduled to end this year on Dec. 31. He represented himself before the commission and had no previous disciplinary history with the panel, Mr. Tembeckjian said.

New York is among a number of states that allow so-called lay justices like Mr. Snyder to decide minor cases under a system that dates to America’s colonial era, when lawyers were not as ubiquitous as they are today. In 2019, according to the judicial commission, only about 700 of New York’s roughly 1,830 town and village judges had attended law school.

Before running for town justice, Mr. Snyder was a member of the Town Board in Petersburgh, a rural community with just under 1,400 residents near the Vermont and Massachusetts borders about 30 miles east of Albany. He has lived in the town his whole life and is a longtime volunteer firefighter there. He graduated from high school and did not attend college.

“Everybody in town likes me,” he said during a hearing before the judicial commission last July. “And I have never lost election in town.”

Mr. Snyder’s résumé includes 34 years at a company in Bennington, Vt., where he worked in quality control on carbon-fiber tables used in X-ray machines. Before that, he did stints at a sawmill and a grocery store. He retired in 2016 to help take care of his grandchildren, and now spends most of his time doing that.

The details of his background emerged at the commission hearing, where he sought to clarify the remarks he had made in trying to get out of grand jury service.

It did not go well, according to a transcript.

Mr. Snyder insisted several times that he understood that all people were innocent until proved guilty. But he also made comments that indicated an imperfect grasp of the concept and reiterated the belief that had gotten him into trouble in the first place.

“I know they’re guilty because they did something wrong,” he said at one point. “That’s how they got a ticket.”

The referee leading the hearing also asked him if he understood what a grand jury did.

“Not really,” Mr. Snyder answered. He said he had never presided over a trial but had taken part in annual training as required and had passed every test.

“In my court, I treat everybody the same, equal, fair, honest,” he said. “I try to work with people, try to help them out. I take pride in my job.”

He acknowledged that the primary reason he did not want to take part in the six-week grand jury term was because it would interfere with his taking care of his grandson and chores like letting his daughter’s dog out. He said a deputy sheriff with whom he went bowling had told him a person in his role would never be picked.

Heinz Noeding, the Petersburgh town supervisor, said in an interview that Mr. Snyder had informed him by letter in December that he would be stepping down as town justice at the end of the month for personal reasons and that he had only learned of the disciplinary action when the commission announced it this week and news outlets reported it.

A “real humdinger,” Mr. Noeding said.

He will now interview potential replacements to complete the remainder of Mr. Snyder’s term. Would he ask candidates their views on what it means for a judge to be impartial?

Mr. Noeding said he had not considered it before, “but it’s probably a reasonable question.”

Susan C. Beachy contributed research.