Former Queens judge censured for using gun to trick police officer during a hearing

Manhattan Judge Jeffrey Gershuny, who previously served in Queens, was censured by the Commission on Judicial Conduct for trying to deceive a witness during a suppression hearing by running an “experiment” with his own pistol.  Eagle file photo by Rob Abruzzese

By Jacob Kaye

A Manhattan judge who served in Queens for half a decade was publicly censured by the state’s Commission on Judicial Conduct after he pulled out a gun during an evidence hearing in an effort to trick a police officer who was testifying.

Criminal Court Judge Jeffrey Gershuny was hit with the punishment by the commission on Tuesday after the judicial watchdog found that he wrongly attempted to deceive a witness during a suppression hearing and that his conduct “undermined public confidence in the integrity of the judiciary.”

Gershuny was overseeing a suppression hearing in Brooklyn Criminal Court in August 2025 when he concocted “a little experiment” that was “kind of unprecedented,” according to the Commission on Judicial Conduct’s investigation.

During a break in the hearing, the judge, who served in Queens from 2019 until 2024, pulled out his SIG Sauer P365 pistol, which he was licensed to own and often carried in a holster underneath his judicial robes, and placed it on the bench.

When the hearing resumed and an officer, who was testifying that he had spotted a gun in a bag carried by the defendant, took to the stand, the judge pulled out his own gun. Gershuny allegedly told the cop that he was going to place the gun in a shopping bag and ask the officer questions about what qualities of the bag would lead one to believe a gun was inside it.

But instead of putting the gun – which was unloaded – in the bag, he dropped it at his feet and instead put a stapler inside it.

At several points, the prosecutor in the case objected to the experiment, noting that neither the gun nor the bag was the same as the one allegedly being carried by the defendant, but Gershuny continued.

Throughout the questioning, Gershuny regularly lied about the contents of the bag. Nonetheless, the police officer repeatedly declined to say that he could see a gun inside it, according to the commission.

Eventually, the officer said that he saw an L-shaped object in the bag.

“I guess what you identified is an L-shaped object, which is a Swingline Stapler,” Gershuny said in response.

As a result of the police officer’s testimony, Gershuny ruled to suppress the gun found in the case, referencing his “experiment” as one of the reasons the evidence shouldn’t be allowed at trial.

Prosecutors then decided to drop the charges against the defendant.

While the commission ruled that Gershuny had a right to bring the gun to court – judges are exempt from rules banning guns in “sensitive locations,” such as courtrooms, within New York City – they found that he violated a number of judicial conduct rules related to the deception.

“Public confidence in the integrity of the courts depends on judges being honest and above-board,” Commission Administrator Robert Tembeckjian said in a statement. “Judge Gershuny did not abide by that standard when he engaged in an elaborate deception and essentially tried to trick a witness on a significant evidentiary matter.”