State court officials will decide whether NY judges 70 or older can serve past retirement age.

State court officials will soon decide whether more than a dozen New York City judges who are 70 or older can keep serving past retirement age. A database of judicial records shows one judge in Queens is a statistical outlier in terms of legal errors.

The annual process to determine whether judges in their 70s can remain on the bench is typically secretive, and input submitted during the public comment period is kept confidential. But information about New York’s judiciary has become increasingly public amid a movement in recent years for more transparency, shedding new light on a branch of government that wields immense power yet often operates far from public view.

Now, in a rare public bid to oust a sitting judge, a group of criminal justice reform advocates, citing court data and records, say higher courts have reversed Queens Justice Michael Aloise’s decisions on evidence and sentence lengths at a higher rate than nearly any other state judge. In a letter shared with Gothamist, they urged officials to force Aloise into retirement.