Paul Edelstein:
Hello. Welcome to Pulling Back the Legal Curtain. I am your host, Paul Edelstein. I’ll have my partner, Glenn Faegenburg, with me most of the time. This podcast is for all of you out there who have ever read about a court case, seen a court case, been involved in a court case, went to court, thought about court, and wondered what the hell is going on in courts. It seems like every day we have these kind of questions and get asked them, so on this podcast we will pull back the curtain on the mystery that sometimes surrounds the court and what happens there, and hopefully give you some answers, some interesting, some humorous, some surprising. Stick with us on Pulling Back the Legal Curtain.
So here we are with Judge Charles Thomas, clearly my favorite judge that I’ve ever been in front of, and it’s a pleasure to have you on here. You have not only been a judge for me, but a mentor for me, a client of mine, a friend, and you were like a colleague of my father’s and a student with my father, were you not?
Charles Thomas:
Absolutely. He was a couple of years behind me in law school, but I remember him very, very well.
Paul Edelstein:
Amazing. So you couldn’t be a more perfect judicial person for me to ask questions of I think, right?
Charles Thomas:
I’m here. I’m here. I’m here to answer.
Paul Edelstein:
There you go. So before we get the very rare chance of an attorney questioning a judge… By the way, do judges like being questioned by attorneys?
Charles Thomas:
Probably not, but you’re a friend as well. I have no problems listening to you, so go on.
Paul Edelstein:
Why don’t we start by… Because some people are going to listen to this, hopefully more than just our friends and relatives, and they don’t know who you are. Why don’t you tell us? I know you went to law school with my father way back when, Brooklyn Law, but why don’t you take us through some of your history?
Charles Thomas:
My history? Well, I was born in the Bronx, went to Bronx Science, went to Brooklyn Law School, Brooklyn College, went into the Army, worked as an attorney for 22 years in my own practice, and then one day I said to myself it’s time to do something different, and I made moves to get a judgeship.
I’ll tell you how that worked. I walked over to my district leader, I met him on the street, I introduced myself, and I said… I introduced myself and I said, “You know what? I would like to be a judge.” He says, “You know, that’s great, because I can get more work out of you than somebody that comes along and tells me their interested in the issues of the day.” We were honest with each other.
I got involved in politics. I became the president of the club and chairman of the board of the club, and I paid my dues, and when I would complain to my district leader, “What’s going on, what’s going on,” he would always remind me, “Listen, Harry Truman started this way, so don’t worry about it. You’ll be okay.”
One thing led to another. I finally was able to get the designation, and I ran in a very hotly contested primary in Rockaway, where I live, and I won by a grand total of 111 votes, and here I am 30 some odd years later, 40 years later. We did it, so it’s been a great experience.
Paul Edelstein:
How many years did you sit on the bench?
Charles Thomas:
28 years on the bench, and then another 10 years as a judicial hearing officer. I would still be a judicial hearing officer if it wasn’t for COVID, which did away with the program.
Paul Edelstein:
Yeah. I personally think you should still be a judge, not a judicial-
Charles Thomas:
Well, the Constitution said I’m too old. They retired me.
Paul Edelstein:
You know, it’s interesting, so let’s talk about this for a second. The Constitution said you were too old to be judge, even though it’s clear that you’re capable of doing it, but apparently it has no such restrictions for who could be the president of the United States?
Charles Thomas:
Right, and it doesn’t seem to stop federal courts from going until they drop, but in New York State it’s 76. Actually, I think in certain states it’s probably even less. I’m grateful for the opportunity to have become a judicial hearing officer in light of the situation. I enjoyed that and they treated me very well. I have no complaints about that. I would like to be a judge, but, hey, we all do get old.
Paul Edelstein:
Let’s really get back to where you were an attorney and you made that jump from attorney to judge. You just kind of went through that, said, “Oh, I was an attorney for 22 years and then I just decided I wanted to be a judge.” But wait a minute, I’ve been an attorney for 29 years, I never had that thought when I was walking on the streets, let me just change and become a judge. What prompted you to do that?
Charles Thomas:
Well, I guess my wife was pretty influential in that. Actually when I first thought of practicing law I went to small claims court with my wife as an observer, and she loved the idea of being in the courtroom and the majesty of the dark wood benches. It was something very rich and exciting to her. She said, “I want to see you up there one day.” I said, “Nah, we got time for that,” and we did have time for that. But little by little I’m out there, I was practicing law, and frankly I got a little bit of a burnout. I was getting tired of doing the same thing all of the time. I wanted to change.
To my mind being a judge was the highest thing you could be as a lawyer, the best job in the world, so it gave me something to strive for, and I strived.
Paul Edelstein:
You didn’t just strive, you thrived. I mean maybe some of the people watching this don’t know your reputation, but I do. I mean you’re stellar.
Let me ask you a question. So first day on the job, so you’re a judge, you get sworn in, because I’ve seen that. That’s pretty cool, when your family comes, and it’s a really regal and formal process, and really a nice thing to participate in. I’ve been lucky to be invited to a lot of that. Not yours. I think I was like, I don’t know, maybe in college when you were sworn in. But what was your first day like as a judge? What’s that like, day one?
Charles Thomas:
Day one was they sent me to the Bronx criminal court, an arraignment in criminal court. I knew nothing about it really. I had practiced a little bit of criminal law, but not a hell of a lot. They put me on the bench with a seasoned old-timer who was up there. I watched what he was doing, and after about 10 minutes of watching him I said, “You know, I could do this. You can go in the back.” He went in the back and read the newspaper. And it just flowed, it just flowed.
It was funny that the first case I really had, an arraignment, was a criminal case and the attorney who came out was an attorney from Queens that I knew who he was. I was surprised to see an attorney from Queens in the Bronx. It was a big drug case, and I didn’t know what the numbers were when you ask for bail. I had no idea. I wasn’t given really any specific instructions.
But in the criminal court you get a back on a pleading, so another judge had already written on it, so I had a guideline of what had been there before. The pleading came out and it showed the judge had given $500 on bail. So when it came time for me I put down… I said $500, and the district attorney, he went nuts. “How could you do that, judge? This is a monster drug case. This is terrible,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I said, “Oh, boy, this is a hell of a way to start the business.”
So I went home, I didn’t sleep that night, came back the next morning and I spoke to my administrating judge, a fellow named Larry Pinetti, who was a wonderful guy, and he said, “Look, I spoke to the DA.” The DA at the time was Mario Barola, and I explained the situation, and Mario said, “Don’t worry about it. Everything is going to be okay.”
It turned out it was okay, because all of these drugs that supposedly the defendant had wasn’t really drugs. It was just talcum powder. So I mean that was an interesting way to start my career. So that was my first day.
Paul Edelstein:
What year was that?
Charles Thomas:
1983. 1983.
Paul Edelstein:
See, I was in high school.
Charles Thomas:
Yeah. I was elected in ’82 in a very, very hard fought competitive race. I had a primary. That was my problem. It wasn’t a [inaudible 00:09:47], and I had a lot of opposition. I was lucky though in my election, because I had three opponents, and one opponent who could have been really very much the opposition was collecting signatures to get on the ballot, and it turns out he had a friend of mine collecting signatures.
I go, “How can you do this to me? You’re collecting signatures against me and you’ve known me all these years.” He said, ‘Don’t worry, because I’m only collecting where people don’t know me and they don’t know you,” whatever that means. It turns out he went to the wrong district to collect signatures, and he never got on the ballot thankfully. Hey, that’s fate.
Did I make myself clear on that?
Paul Edelstein:
Yeah, very clear. So whatever became of this… This was your chief opponent, who couldn’t even get his signatures right on the ballot. Whatever happened to him?
Charles Thomas:
I never knew. I never saw him again. I never saw him in court. I never saw him.
Paul Edelstein:
Sounds like it was a good idea, that he’d not be qualified for the bench.
Charles Thomas:
Well, actually he had a very interesting slogan. I had the Democratic line, but he had the conservative line, the liberal line, and the Republican line, and his slogan was, “Three out of four, let’s make it unanimous.” That was a little scary in a way, but thankfully my district was very much a Democratic district and I won by a big deal, 111 votes, but we did it. After that I was elected several other times. It was never a problem.
Paul Edelstein:
Right. That’s because now you’re on the bench and you demonstrate that you have skills.
Charles Thomas:
Yeah.
Paul Edelstein:
What was that like, that first election? Was it like election night like we see now on TV? How did you know you won? How did that work?
Charles Thomas:
It was just like you see on TV. You’re sitting in a room and they’re calling in numbers, and your club is listening to the numbers in the beginning. You’re getting results. They got a board in the club where it shows you who’s who and what’s what.
Actually I had to go to court, because they tried to knock me off once I even got my plurality of 111 votes. Yeah, it was like TV. That was the only time it ever happened that way. Otherwise it was very much perfunctory, matter of fact, because it is overwhelmingly a Democratic area, and you wait your turn, and if you don’t get caught with your pants down you do okay.
Paul Edelstein:
Perfect. You know, getting caught with your pants down, that’s a perfect segue into where we’re going to go.
Thanks for joining us on Pulling Back the Legal Curtain with Paul and Glenn. Because we get so many questions over so many years about what goes on behind the legal curtain, in the legal world, we tried to put this together so it would be entertaining and interesting and hopefully educational.
You can find The Edelsteins Faegenburg & Brown Law firm on LinkedIn.