Legal advocates call for the forced retirement of a Queens judge

Justice Michael Aloise of the Queens Supreme Court, Criminal Term applied for certification to extend his judicial tenure past his 70th birthday. Critics of Aloise’s record say it should be denied. Photo courtesy of nycourts.gov

By Noah Powelson

A longtime Queens judge is facing calls to retire from a legal advocacy group which cites longstanding concerns with his record.

Justice Michael Aloise will turn 70 at the end of the year, and is set to retire as required by the New York State Constitution unless he can get a certification for a two-year extension. But in a letter from the Center for Community Alternatives, advocates said Aloise has a long history of legal errors and bias, and called on the Administrative Board to force the Queens judge into retirement.

In the 12-page letter, the CCA cited dozens of cases Aloise presided over in which the Court of Appeals or Appellate Division, Second Department panels reversed the defendants’ convictions due to errors or mishandling by the Queens judge.

The listed cases of judicial errors and conviction reversals occurred between 2009 to as recently as this year. CCA obtained the information using a database created by Scrutinize, a nonprofit that documents the number of conviction reversals judges receive as well as the number of excessive sentences judges issue.

The errors the Appellate Department found Aloise committed ranged from infringing on a defendant's constitutional rights, to undermining jury integrity, to allowing improper or prejudicial testimony to be introduced at trial and other errors. The rulings have resulted in new trials being required, and one incident in which the case was reassigned away from Aloise’s oversight.

The most recent case came in May 2025, when the Court of Appeals reversed a felony conviction and ordered a new trial after Aloise denied the defendant the right to represent themselves.

In another incident, a panel of judges in the Appellate Division, Second Department ordered a new trial after Aloise booted the defendant’s friend from the courtroom in 2016 for napping. In their July 2025 ruling, the judges found that by doing so, Aloise had excluded a spectator from the courtroom and thereby violated the defendant’s right to a public trial, delaying what should have been a clear-cut conviction.

Advocates argue incidents like this not only harm defendants, but require more trials, more court hearings and more time to rectify the issues. This added workload, advocates argue, works against the intention of certifying Supreme Court justices to reduce caseload and ensure efficient trials.

“Justice Michael B. Aloise has repeatedly infringed defendants’ constitutional rights, including the rights to a fair and public trial, to present a complete defense, and to confront adverse witnesses,” Peter Martin, the CCA director of judicial accountability, said in a statement. “When deciding which judges to allow to serve past the state’s mandatory retirement age, the Administrative Board has a vital public responsibility: ensuring that no judge is allowed to continue serving without showing that he or she meets the high standards of legal knowledge, impartiality, and integrity that we demand of every judge.”

“We call on court leadership not to grant certification to Judge Aloise, who has made it clear after decades on the bench that he is unfit to continue to serve,” Martin added.

The CCA also said Aloise has a long-standing issue of over sentencing defendants based on legal errors and not on the severity of the crime.

In 2014, for example, the Second Department found Aloise improperly imposed consecutive sentences for two convictions, even though both charges came from the same incident. The court also found Aloise made this same mistake in a different case in 2020.

According to Scrutinize’s judicial profile of Aloise, the judge was found to have issued excessive sentences in three separate cases. The database also shows the appellate court has reduced a combined 45 years from sentences Aloise issued, more than nearly any other judge in the state.

Aloise’s office directed an Eagle inquiry to the Office of Court Administration for a comment on CCA’s letter.

Al Baker, a state spokesperson for the OCA, said in a statement that “the UCS does not comment on the certification process, or on judges’ determinations, which are based on the facts of individual cases and the judge’s discretion under the law.”

The process of certifying an extension of a retiring Supreme Court justice’s tenure was enacted to help alleviate burgeoning caseloads which keep experienced on the bench and delay the need to fill empty seats. With certification, a justice can stay on the bench until they turn 76, but would have to reapply for certification every two years until they hit that maximum.

The decision of whether to grant certification to a judge at the required retirement age is made by the court system’s Administrative Board, which is made up of five judges: the state’s chief judge and the presiding justices of the four departments of the Appellate Division, the state’s intermediate appeals court.

In late June, the court system circulated invitations for public comment for over 40 justices who were seeking certification or recertification, including Aloise, asking for statements on the judges’ ability, knowledge and character.

The CCA issued the 12-page-letter on Aloise in response. In terms of his character, the CCA also claimed Aloise had displayed bias in favor of law enforcement and against defendants.

The letter highlights one case in 2016 when Aloise denied a defendant’s motion to vacate his judgement because he was deprived of efficient counsel. The appellate court sided with the defendant, finding his attorney did not inform him he could still face life imprisonment for a plea deal because he was a persistent felon. Not only was the case brought back to the court, but the appellate court made the exceptionally rare decision to take the case away from Aloise.

In the court documents for People vs Brown, the Appellate Division, Second Department agreed that the case should be handled by a different judge for “certain statements made by the court at sentencing and certain determinations in the order on appeal might give rise to an appearance that the court was predisposed to rule against the defendant.”