Longtime Queens criminal court judge retires

Queens Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Holder walks out of the courthouse on his final day as a judge. Eagle photo by Noah Powelson

By Noah Powelson

When Queens Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Holder walked out the backdoor of the Queens Criminal Courthouse for the last time last week, he didn’t know what to expect.

He thought a small gathering of his colleagues might be waiting for him on the other side, but when the doors opened, he found over a hundred people lined up, applauding and cheering as he made his exit. Among them were his fellow judges, his staff, court officers and attorneys who had repeatedly stood before him in court.

“It was overwhelming,” Holder said. “It caused you to just stop and look and just consider your life, and how did you get to this point.”

Holder retired as a Supreme Court justice on Tuesday, ending an over 40-year career in law. He officially retires on July 31, but he won’t be overseeing any cases for the remainder of his term.

Holder filled a special role in Queens Supreme Criminal Court. Unlike most judges, who have a variety of cases they cycle through, Holder’s judicial calendar has been almost entirely filled with murder cases for about the last decade.

As a result, Holder’s work has received more media coverage than possibly any other sitting justice in Queens Supreme Court, Criminal Term, as high-profile murders have brought out hundreds of reporters to his courtroom over the years.

In 2024, Holder oversaw the case of Devin Spraggins, who was found guilty of shooting and attempting to murder NYPD officer Brett Boller while trying to escape arrest in 2023.

That same year, he presided over the trial of Xiaoning Zhang, a Chinese national who was found guilty of murdering her former Queens-based immigration lawyer.

He also oversaw the trial of Sean Brown, who was convicted of killing 14-year-old Aamir Griffin in a shooting that sparked a gang feud in South Jamaica.

Holder told the Eagle that the strangest case he worked on was that of Glenn Hirsch, who was given the name the “duck sauce killer” after he was accused of shooting and murdering Zhiwen Yan, a food delivery worker in Forest Hills, after the two got in an argument about duck sauce. Hirsch committed suicide before he could stand trial.

Holder oversaw hundreds of murder cases in his time in Queens Supreme Court, which began in 2007.

The judge said all of the cases were intensely emotional, and that each brought unique challenges. He also learned to accept that he’d be the subject of intense scrutiny from the public and the press alike.

“They're all terrible cases,” Holder said. “People are going to say whatever they're going to say, you know, but there's no lawyer that said that I didn't give them a fair trial.”

For a few months in 2024, Holder also served as the interim administrative judge of Queens Criminal Court.

But while Holder has most recently been known for his muder case docket, he’s most proud of the work he did to help set up Queens’ first drug courts while working as a prosecutor.

After Holder graduated from the University of Toledo, he got his start practicing law with the Queens district attorney’s office in 1985 – he worked there for the next two decades.

Holder was quickly assigned a deluge of murder cases as the crack epidemic that plagued Queens in the ‘80s led to a significant increase in violence across the borough.

“There was so much crime that even the homicide bureau couldn't handle the number of murder cases that they had,” Holder said.

Within five years, Holder had been made deputy bureau chief of the DA’s Narcotics Trial Bureau, where he worked for the next 15 years.

Over time, Holder began to see less violent drug crimes being committed in the borough and instead saw more people being put away from long periods of time due to simple possession because of the Rockefeller drug laws, which required minimum sentences for drug possession.

He eventually found out the federal government at the time was offering a $6 million grant to create a drug court, which Queens didn’t have at that point.

Working with the DA’s office, Holder applied for the grant and received it soon after. He traveled around the country to visit other state’s drug courts and soon established Queen’s first-ever drug treatment court program.

The drug treatment court is approaching its 30th anniversary, and Holder said the work he did there has helped spawn the borough’s misdemeanor court, mental health court, veterans court and various other programs that help people get services they need and keep them out of jail.

“I've helped thousands and thousands of people,” Holder said. “We were giving people job training...we were finding them clothes, we were getting them apartments to live in. It got so intense that people on the street were asking if they could put their sons in the program.”

Along with the recent retirement of Queens Supreme Court Justice Michael Aloise, who also oversaw a high number of murder cases, Queen Criminal Courthouse will have to find a new judge to take on the borough’s biggest murder cases.

On the morning of his last day, the judges and staff of Queens criminal courts gathered together for a celebratory breakfast honoring the departing judge.

Holder was thanked for his long service by Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, Administrative Judge of Queens Supreme Court, Criminal Term Michelle Johnson and Chief Administrative Judge Joseph Zayas.

“We are losing an old school icon who worked hard every single day,” Zayas said. “It’s a big loss for the courts, the bench and the bar. After all of those years as a jurist, [Holder], you deserve to retire.”