Historical Society of the NY Courts, 140 Grand Street, Ste 701, White Plains, NY (2026)

08/26/2026

Gertrude Schimmel stood at City Hall on August 26, 1971, as Mayor John Lindsay and Police Commissioner Patrick V. Murphy pinned captain’s bars to her uniform. She was the first woman in the New York City Police Department to hold the rank.

Schimmel joined the department in 1940 and won the Chief Inspector’s Trophy for excellence in her academy class. She entered a police force that treated women as a separate class of employee. “Policewomen” generally worked in the Bureau of Policewomen, handling cases involving women and children. Their work excluded patrol duty, and the rank offered no path to promotion.

Felicia Shpritzer challenged that system. In 1961, after nearly twenty years with the department, she and five other policewomen applied to take the promotional examination for sergeant. The city rejected all six. Its Civil Service Commission said policewomen did not hold an eligible title. Police Commissioner Michael J. Murphy maintained that women lacked the strength and endurance required of sergeants.

Shpritzer brought an Article 78 proceeding on behalf of herself and other policewomen. In Matter of Shpritzer v. Lang, the Appellate Division held that law allowed policewomen to take the examination. Excluding them under the city’s Administrative Code, the court wrote, reflected “an archaic approach in light of modern day conditions.” The Court of Appeals affirmed in 1963, relying on city law and leaving the constitutional question undecided.

The ruling opened the 1964 sergeant’s examination to policewomen. Of the 126 women who took it, Shpritzer and Schimmel passed. They received their stripes in March 1965 and alternated supervising 160 policewomen. Both passed the lieutenant’s examination the following year and were promoted in 1967.

Schimmel’s promotion to captain came on the fifty-first anniversary of the certification of the Nineteenth Amendment. At the ceremony, she directed attention back to the woman who had gone to court. Felicia Shpritzer, she said, had won the case and deserved the praise.

08/21/2026

William Freeman died in his cell at Auburn Prison on August 21, 1847, seven months after New York’s Supreme Court of Judicature reversed his murder conviction. His case, preserved in the Society’s Legal History Archive, became an early test of the insanity defense.

Freeman was of African and Native American descent. At sixteen, he had been wrongly convicted of stealing a horse and sentenced to five years of hard labor at Auburn. Prison overseers punished him for stopping work to protest his innocence. During one beating, he suffered a severe head injury. He later became deaf and lived in a state of confusion.

After his release, Freeman sought compensation for his imprisonment. In March 1846, he entered the Van Nest home near Owasco Lake and killed four members of the family, including a two-year-old child.

Former Governor William H. Seward agreed to defend him. Public anger ran heavily against Freeman and his lawyer. Seward wrote to Thurlow W**d that there was “a busy war around me, to drive me from defending and securing a fair trial for the negro Freeman.” Attorney General John Van Buren prosecuted the case.

The court first asked a jury whether Freeman was competent to stand trial. It found that he was. During the murder trial, the judge excluded expert testimony concerning Freeman’s mental condition. Freeman was convicted and sentenced to death.

Seward sought review from the Supreme Court of Judicature. Justice Samuel Beardsley wrote that the competency finding did not resolve whether Freeman had been legally insane when the killings occurred. Evidence supporting that defense should have been heard by the trial jury. The court reversed the conviction and ordered a new trial.

Freeman died of tuberculosis before the new trial could begin. A postmortem examination found advanced deterioration of his brain.

Our archive includes the case history and the digitized 1848 trial record: https://tinyurl.com/nyfreeman

📸: Rendering of William Freeman, Daily Cayuga Tocsin Extra, March 19, 1846. William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan.

08/20/2026

By the time Skelos v. Paterson (https://www.nycourts.gov/Reporter/3dseries/2009/2009_06585.htm) reached the Court of Appeals, the Senate struggle that prompted Richard Ravitch’s appointment had ended. The appointment raised a question the court had never answered: could a governor fill a vacancy in the office of lieutenant governor?

Paterson relied on section 43 of the Public Officers Law. It directs the governor to appoint someone when a vacancy occurs in an elective office and no other law provides a way to fill it.

The senators pointed to article IV of the State Constitution. When the lieutenant governorship is vacant, it assigns the office’s duties to the temporary president of the Senate. They read that provision as the complete rule. The office remained empty until the next election for governor and lieutenant governor.

The Court divided 4–3. Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman’s majority treated article IV and section 43 as serving different purposes. The temporary president kept the lieutenant governor’s work going during a vacancy. An appointment under section 43 filled the position. Since the law excluded the lieutenant governorship from a separate midterm election, the appointee could serve until governor and lieutenant governor next appeared together on the ballot.

Judge Eugene Pigott’s dissent argued that article IV had already assigned every duty of the vacant office. In his view, that left nothing for an appointee under section 43 to do. He also pointed to the state’s experience with at least ten earlier vacancies. No governor had used section 43 to appoint a lieutenant governor. The dissent warned that the majority’s rule allowed a governor to choose the person next in the line of succession. That person might later become governor without ever having appeared on a statewide ballot.

On September 22, 2009, the Court reversed the Appellate Division and upheld Ravitch’s appointment. Ravitch served through the end of Paterson’s term. The decision supplied the authority later used to fill new vacancies in the lieutenant governorship by appointment.

08/19/2026

Over the summer on 2009, the State Senate had its share of troubles. The trouble began on June 8, when Democratic Senators Pedro Espada Jr. and Hiram Monserrate joined Republicans in an attempt to replace the Senate’s leadership. Both sides claimed control of the chamber. After Monserrate returned to the Democratic conference, the Senate stood evenly divided at 31–31.

When Eliot Spitzer resigned in March 2008, Lieutenant Governor David Paterson became governor and his former office fell vacant. New York law provided no settled method for replacing him.

The lieutenant governor serves as president of the Senate and may cast a tie-breaking vote on procedural questions. The competing factions also recognized different temporary presidents, leaving uncertainty over who stood next in line to become governor.

Paterson called special sessions as senators argued over who could conduct business. On July 8, he appointed Richard Ravitch lieutenant governor. No New York governor had filled the office by appointment before. Paterson relied on section 43 of the Public Officers Law, which allows the governor to fill a vacancy when the law supplies no other method. Ravitch accepted the appointment and filed his oath that night.

Senators Dean Skelos and Espada sued the next day. They argued that lieutenant governors had to be elected with governors and that the statute could not supply an appointment power absent from the Constitution. A Nassau County judge issued a preliminary injunction barring Ravitch from acting as lieutenant governor. Paterson appealed.

On August 20, the Appellate Division, Second Department, affirmed the injunction. Its four judges found no constitutional or statutory authority for the appointment. During a vacancy, they concluded, the temporary president of the Senate could perform the lieutenant governor’s duties. The office itself could only be filled through an election.

Paterson and Ravitch took the case to the Court of Appeals, which agreed to hear it on an expedited schedule. More on that tomorrow!

📸: Richard Ravitch, 2009. Photograph by Matt Ryan, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.

08/17/2026

Robert Fulton’s North River Steamboat left New York City for Albany on August 17, 1807. Carrying paying passengers up the Hudson at about five miles per hour, it completed the trip in roughly 32 hours.

Often called the Clermont today, the vessel had a different name in its time. Fulton called it the North River Steamboat. Earlier inventors had built steamboats, and Fulton later developed them into a commercially successful passenger service.

That success rested partly on an exclusive right granted by New York. The state had given Robert Livingston a monopoly over steamboat navigation in New York waters. Livingston partnered with Fulton, and the Legislature extended their control as they developed regular service. Other operators needed a license from them to use steam power on the state’s waterways.

The arrangement became harder to maintain as steamboat travel expanded. Aaron Ogden held a license under the Livingston-Fulton monopoly to carry passengers between New Jersey and New York City. His former business partner, Thomas Gibbons, began running competing boats on the same route under a federal coastal-trade license. Cornelius Vanderbilt, early in his career, operated boats for Gibbons.

Ogden obtained an injunction from the New York Court of Chancery. The Court for the Trial of Impeachments and Correction of Errors, then New York’s highest court, affirmed it. Under New York law, Ogden held the exclusive right to operate the route by steam.

Gibbons appealed to the United States Supreme Court, asking a foundational question: how did New York’s monopoly fit with Congress’s authority to regulate commerce among the states?

In 1824, Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that interstate commerce included navigation. Congress had regulated coastal trade through federal licensing, and New York could not prevent a federally licensed vessel from operating between New York and another state. The monopoly could not be enforced against Gibbons.

The injunction ended, more operators entered New York’s interstate steamboat trade, service expanded, and passenger fares fell sharply, opening the Hudson to widespread commercial travel.

📸: Clermont replica

08/13/2026

The New York State Assembly voted 79 to 45 to impeach Governor William Sulzer on August 13, 1913. Seven months into his term, Sulzer became the first New York governor to be impeached. He remains the only one.

Sulzer had spent much of his political career with Tammany Hall’s support. After eighteen years in Congress, he ran for governor in 1912 with the backing of Tammany leader Charles F. Murphy.

The relationship deteriorated soon after Sulzer took office. He resisted Murphy’s choices for state appointments and supported investigations into contracts awarded by the previous administration. He also backed a direct primary bill intended to reduce the power of party leaders over nominations.

Questions had also emerged about Sulzer’s 1912 campaign. An Assembly committee found that his financial report omitted several contributions. Witnesses testified that some donors considered their contributions personal gifts and that Sulzer had used the money to buy stocks. The articles of impeachment accused him of filing a false report, committing perjury, and attempting to influence witnesses.

The Assembly considered the articles during a special session Sulzer had called for his direct primary bill. Murphy worked with legislative leaders to secure the votes for impeachment.

The trial began in September before the Court for the Trial of Impeachments. Under the New York Constitution, that court consisted of state senators and judges of the Court of Appeals. Sulzer’s attorneys objected to using conduct from before his term as grounds for removal. The Court allowed the charges to proceed.

Sulzer did not testify. On October 17, the Court convicted him on three of the eight articles, involving his campaign report, perjury, and advice to another person to give false testimony. He was removed from office. The Court declined to disqualify him from holding office again.

On November 4, voters in Sulzer’s Lower East Side district elected him to the Assembly. He returned to Albany as a member of the chamber that had impeached him.

08/11/2026

The Historical Society of the New York Courts mourns the passing of Hon. John Carro, a pioneer in the New York judiciary and a longtime leader in the Latino legal community.

Born in Orocovis, Puerto Rico, in 1927, Justice Carro moved with his family to New York City at age 10 and grew up in East Harlem. After serving in the U.S. Navy, he attended Fordham University and Brooklyn Law School. His public service career included serving as an Assistant to New York City Mayor Robert F. Wagner and later as a judge on the New York City Criminal Court.

In 1977, Justice Carro was elected to the New York State Supreme Court. Two years later, Governor Hugh L. Carey appointed him to the Appellate Division, First Department, making him the first Puerto Rican to serve on an Appellate Division court in New York State. He served on the First Department for 15 years, retiring in 1994.

Justice Carro was also a founding member of the organization that became the Latino Judges Association, originally established as the Association of Judges of Hispanic Heritage. He later served as its president. He was also a past president of The Puerto Rican Bar Association and held leadership roles with organizations including the Puerto Rican Forum and ASPIRA.

Reflecting on his passing, current Latino Judges Association President Hon. Elena Goldberg Velazquez said:

“Justice John Caro was a founder of the Latino Judges Association and a trailblazer in the Latino Legal Community. We offer our heartfelt condolences to the Caro family as they mourn their Patriarch and our Founder.”

Throughout his career, Justice Carro was committed to expanding opportunities for Latino lawyers and judges. Through his leadership and mentorship, he supported many members of the legal community and helped establish a stronger presence for Latino attorneys and jurists in New York and beyond. His example helped inspire generations of lawyers and judges who followed him.

The Society is particularly saddened by Justice Carro’s passing given his connection to the Latino Judges Association, with which the Society has a longstanding and valued relationship. We extend our condolences to his family, friends, colleagues, and to the many lawyers and judges whose careers and lives he influenced.

Justice Carro’s career and contributions will remain an important part of New York’s legal and judicial history.

Photo Courtesy Latino Judges Association: Founding members of the Association of Judges of Hispanic Heritage which later became the LJA; Justice Carro is on the front row, far right:

Back Row (L-R): Hon. Donald Grajales, Hon. Joseph Torres, Hon. Cesar Quinones, Hon. Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick, Hon. Luis A. Gonzalez, Hon. Jaime A. Rios, Hon. Charles Tejada, Hon. Frank Torres, Hon. Raul Figueroa.
Front Row (L-R): Hon. Nicholas Figueroa, Hon. Gilbert Ramirez, Hon. Irma Vidal Santaella, Hon. John Carro

08/11/2026

On August 12, 1977, Governor Hugh Carey signed what became known as New York’s “Son of Sam” law. It came just two days after the arrest of David Berkowitz, amid concern that he might sell his story and profit from the public attention surrounding the case.

The law applied whenever someone accused or convicted of a crime was paid for a book, film, interview, or other account of it. Instead of going directly to that person, the money would be turned over to the New York State Crime Victims Board and held for possible claims by victims.
More than a decade later, the Board invoked the law against Simon & Schuster over a very different New York crime story.

Henry Hill had worked with Nicholas Pileggi on Wiseguy, the book later adapted into Goodfellas. After learning that the publisher had paid Hill, the Board ordered Simon & Schuster to surrender any money still owed to him. The publisher challenged the law under the First Amendment.
The case reached the United States Supreme Court in 1991. All eight participating justices agreed that New York had gone too far.

The law covered any work in which someone admitted committing a crime, even if that crime was only a small part of the story. In its decision, the Court noted that it might have reached The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience, and writings by Emma Goldman and Martin Luther King Jr. Each discussed unlawful acts, but none could reasonably be treated as an effort to cash in on criminal notoriety.

The state had good reason to help victims recover damages and to stop people from keeping the proceeds of their crimes. But New York had tied those goals to what people chose to write or say. In Simon & Schuster v. Crime Victims Board, the Court held that the First Amendment did not permit such a broad, content-based restriction.

New York rewrote the law. The current version requires notice when a convicted person receives certain funds, giving victims an opportunity to sue and seek preservation of the person’s assets. It does not automatically seize the proceeds of a book or interview because the work happens to mention a crime.

08/10/2026

The American Revolution did not simply divide colonists from British rule. At Oriskany, it divided neighbors, families, and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy itself.

On August 6, 1777, nearly 800 members of the Tryon County militia, joined by Oneida warriors, marched toward Fort Stanwix, then under British siege. Near the Oneida village of Oriska, they entered an ambush laid by a force of Loyalists, Mohawks, and Senecas.

The fighting lasted for hours at close range. General Nicholas Herkimer was shot in the leg but continued directing his men from beneath a tree. Hundreds were dead, wounded, or captured. The relief column never reached the fort, but the battle damaged the besieging force, which withdrew weeks later.

For the Haudenosaunee, the damage went far beyond one battle. The Six Nations had tried to keep the Revolution from becoming their war. At Oriskany, members of a confederacy bound by the Great Law of Peace fought on opposite sides. The conflict divided communities and opened the way for the destruction and dispossession that followed.

The Oneida continued to support the American cause, earning recognition as America’s First Allies. In 1794, the Treaty of Canandaigua established “peace and friendship” between the United States and the Six Nations and recognized lands reserved to the Oneida.

That promise did not hold. The next year, New York obtained 100,000 acres of Oneida land through an agreement made without the federal approval required by the Nonintercourse Act.

The transaction was still before the United States Supreme Court nearly two centuries later. In 1985, the Court held in Oneida II that the Oneida could pursue a federal claim for wrongful possession dating to 1795.

Oriskany did not end when the fighting did. The Oneida fought beside New Yorkers in 1777, then spent generations asking New York and the United States to honor the land rights that alliance was supposed to protect.

08/07/2026

Philippe Petit had no permission to climb to the roof of the World Trade Center. He had no permission to string a cable between its towers. He certainly had no permission to step onto that cable, 1,350 feet above Lower Manhattan.

He did it anyway.

On the morning of August 7, 1974, the 24-year-old French aerialist walked into the open air between the Twin Towers. Far below, New Yorkers stopped in the streets and looked up. Petit crossed the 140-foot gap eight times over the next 45 minutes. He walked backward, knelt, lay down on the wire, and rose again. There was no net and no safety harness.

The performance had taken years to plan and a night to install. Petit and his collaborators entered the towers with forged identification and equipment hidden under tarps. They carried a 450-pound steel cable to the roof, then used a bow and arrow to send the first line across the gap. Each line pulled a heavier one behind it until the cable itself connected the towers.

Police reached both roofs while Petit was still on the wire. They ordered him to come in. He continued walking until rain made the cable slick, then stepped onto the roof and was arrested for criminal trespass and disorderly conduct.

What follows is the most New York part of the story: Manhattan District Attorney Richard Kuh agreed to drop the charges on one condition: Petit would give a free aerial performance for children in Central Park. Petit accepted. On August 29, he walked a wire above Belvedere Lake as children watched from below.

Petit’s walk was dangerous, carefully planned, and plainly illegal. It was also beautiful. Not every criminal charge has to end in a conviction. And what a New York resolution: turn an illegal tightrope walk into a free circus in Central Park.

Historical Society of the NY Courts

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