Class of 1961: Stuart Namm

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• Brooklyn Law School

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Stuart Namm ’61 (1933–2022)

Namm, who graduated from Brooklyn Law School in 1961, served as a Suffolk County judge whose accusations of misconduct by the police and prosecutors on Long Island prompted a state investigation and ultimately cost him renomination by his own party. Appointed to the County Court in 1982, he was initially regarded as a tough “hanging judge,” but his perspective shifted when he noticed that young Black people were being systematically excluded from juries. In 1984 he dismissed an all-white jury pool after finding that young Black residents had been systematically excluded, a decision that helped prompt reforms to Suffolk County’s jury-selection process. His growing skepticism of police testimony and prosecutorial conduct contributed to a series of acquittals and to a State Investigation Commission inquiry that in 1987 found perjury, fabricated evidence, and a “startling lack of professionalism” that had been “shamefully tolerated by the district attorney’s office.” Shunned by party leaders, he was denied renomination in 1992. After leaving the bench, Namm wrote A Whistleblower’s Lament: The Perverted Pursuit of Justice in the State of New York (2014).