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..
more »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).
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