Professor Bruce Green was quoted in Law360 and gave his expert opinion on issues of ethics in the mayoral race in Buffalo, NY.
Buffalo’s upstart Democratic nominee for mayor made an emergency appeal to the Second Circuit Tuesday to stop incumbent mayor and primary loser Byron Brown from belatedly jumping onto the ballot, pointing out ties between the mayor and U.S. District Judge John Sinatra that some legal ethics experts found “troubling.”
Brown, the city’s mayor for 14 years and the party’s endorsed primary candidate, was defeated in a surprise victory by political newcomer India B. Walton in the June primary. Brown missed the deadline to get on the ballot with a different party by several months, but his supporters prevailed in lawsuits last week claiming the state’s 23-week pre-election filing deadline was so far in advance that it was unconstitutional.
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Fordham University Law School professor Bruce Green said that whether Judge Sinatra should have recused himself on the theory he was biased for the mayor was ultimately “a judgment call” and that he thought the judge made a “reasonable decision about how to apply a vague law.” Walton’s attorneys had “waived any claimed right to the judge’s disqualification by failing to object,” Green noted, adding that there was “no reasonable possibility of discipline here.”
