In 2018, now retired Judge Frank LaBuda told defendant Angelo Johnson, who is Black, that his brain was “probably retarded in growth.” LaBuda said at the time that the sentence he was handing down came as a result of his view that Johnson’s “brain is not developed, through no fault of your own,” the New York Daily News reported.
The Appellate Division of state Supreme Court’s Third Department found on Thursday that LaBuda’s remarks aligned with “19th-century polygenism, a racist ideology that focused on the claimed inferiority of Black people based upon now-debunked theories of reduced brain size,” according to the Times Union.
“It is shocking that any court, in 2018, would refer to this Black defendant’s brain, frontal lobes and retardation of growth in concluding that defendant’s brain was not developed,” Appellate Justice Michael Lynch, who authored the ruling, wrote. Justices Christine Clark, Sharon Aarons and John Colangelo concurred.
“To invoke such reasoning today is utterly racist and has no place in our system of justice,” the ruling said.
Johnson called LaBuda a racist during the 2018 trial, according to the Daily News. The former judge also told officers of the court to bind Johnson’s mouth with tape, although this demand did not end up being carried out. LaBuda sentenced Johnson to 15 years in prison for burglary. The appellate court slashed that sentence on Thursday to five years.
LaBuda told the Times Union that his remarks were not racist, although he said he had not read the appellate court’s opinion. “I think you should read what I said and not their opinion, because I am sure there is nothing racial or ethnic about my comments at all,” he told the New York newspaper.
Newsweek reached out to the appellate court for further comment but did not immediately receive a response.
“No one ever deserves these remarks,” Johnson’s appeals lawyer Carolyn George said, according to the Daily News. “It is racist and shockingly inhuman.”
LaBuda retired in 2019 after 22 years on the bench and now works in private practice. Johnson remains jailed for the time being, but has a parole hearing next month.
The appellate court’s decision comes as Black Lives Matter and anti-racism activists continue to raise concerns about systemic racism in the U.S. Justice System. A 2017 report from the United States Sentencing Commission found that Black men are, on average, given sentences 20 percent longer than their white counterparts for the same crimes.
