The New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct has ruled that a judge serving on the Canandaigua Town Court should be removed from his position for allegedly using racial slurs.
The commission said Judge Walter Jones repeatedly used the “n-word” while telling a story to two coworkers in a parking lot after court May 10, 2024. Paperwork said the story was about a Black man who became friends with Jones’ dad while working on his grandfather’s cotton fields in Texas in the 1950s.
There were a handful of people in the parking lot coming and going, and Jones was way too loud,” one of the colleagues told the commission during a Jan. 29, 2026 hearing. “We kept trying to walk away, and he would just get louder and more animated. He thought it was a sweet story of how his dad befriended a Black man in a time when no one else would…