ALBANY – A state panel is recommending the removal of a town justice who repeatedly used a racial slur when telling others about his grandfather’s cotton fields in Texas, and who days later suggested a defendant “played the race card” when she suggested her race played a part in how high he set bail.
Canandaigua Town Court Justice Walter W. Jones repeatedly used the racist slur in a May 10, 2024 conversation outside the Ontario County jail, according to the Commission on Judicial Conduct. In the conversation, he described his grandfather’s Savoy farm, the Black people hired to pick weeds there and the older man’s penchant for beating Jones’ then-teenaged father if he picked slower than the workers, according to the commission.
Jones said one of the Black workers, whom the judge repeatedly referred to as “n—– Harry,” urged the others to pick slower so Jones’ father would not be beaten. The commission’s report goes on to say that Jones’ father didn’t report it when he later spotted Harry taking a chicken from the grandfather’s hen house. Jones was accused of repeating the slur when he recalled that his father spotted the man years later walking on the side of the road. The commission uses the term “[n word] Harry” throughout the document, but in a footnote notes it’s a substitute for the epithet…