Chapter Honors Utica Police Lt. Grace Pruitt and Syracuse City Court Judge Langston McKinney at Annual Spring Dinner

The chapter presented two prestigious awards at its June 23 Spring Dinner in Syracuse.

Police Lt. Grace Pruitt --­ Utica's highest-ranking female officer --­ received the Kharas Award for Distinguished Service in Civil Liberties and Syracuse City Court Judge Langston McKinney was presented with the Faith Seidenberg Award, named in honor of the noted civil rights attorney.
 

This Year’s Kharas Award Winner:
Utica Police Lieutenant Grace A. Pruitt

Grace Pruitt is a 20-year veteran officer of the Utica Police Department who reached the rank of lieutenant in 2005. She is the highest ranking female officer in the UPD, and was honored by the American Legion Post 229 as “Top Cop” in 2006 in recognition of her investigative accomplishments. Lieutenant Pruitt is also the first law enforcement officer to ever be selected to receive the chapter’s Kharas Award.

Kharas Award Winner Police Lt. Grace Pruitt   Click for more pictures

Grace Pruitt worked her way up the ranks in UPD -- from her initial assignments on patrol in two of the highest crime neighborhoods in Utica, to promotion to sergeant in her ninth year on the force, to a special assignment on a county wide multi-agency Sexual Abuse Task Force, to supervisory and command roles in the Criminal Investigations Division (CID). In 2005 she became the second woman in the history of UPD to earn a promotion to lieutenant. In 2008 she transferred from night shift commander in CID to day shift commander in the Patrol Division, overseeing the day to day staffing of a platoon of 30 officers.

While Lieutenant Pruitt was considered for the Kharas Award because of her courageous stand against gender discrimination within her department, this is not the only way in which she has fought for justice. Pruitt has been recognized among her peers for her investigatory work, especially in regards to the most vulnerable victims of crime -- children, elderly and disabled adults. Here are a few examples of how her unique combination of determination, compassion, insight and investigative skill really made a difference:

• A 2002 rape of a 16-year-old girl at knifepoint. Pruitt led the investigation that resulted in the conviction of Phillip Nelson, a man with a long history of violence toward women, children and the elderly. Pruitt’s persistence led to a vigorous prosecution that led to the conviction and sentencing of Nelson to 75 years to life as a persistent felon. The judge determined that this extended incarceration and lifetime supervision would “best serve the public interest.”
• A 2003 case involving the financial exploitation of a 94 year old man over a 2 year period. Another investigator asked Pruitt to assist with the case, which resulted in the conviction of Kenneth Kistner, a handyman, for felony larceny. Kistner was ordered to pay more than $495,000 in restitution.
• The 2004 rape of a 19-year-old woman and her 11-year-old sister who was mentally disabled. The two were raped at knifepoint by a man who entered their apartment. Pruitt led the investigation that led to the conviction and sentencing of Preston Boyd to 150 years in prison.
• The 2005 murder of Sandra Goodman, a 56-year-old woman with disabilities. The case initially focused on check fraud but turned into a missing person investigation. Pruitt found the human remains that proved that Goodman was killed by her landlord, Eleanor Torchia, who ran a boarding house for adults with disabilities. Torchia was sentenced to 15 years to life and the other residents of the boarding house found other, safer homes.

In 2008, Pruitt achieved the top score on the civil service exam for promotion. However, within three months, two male lieutenants were promoted to captain over Pruitt, even though they scored lower on the exam and had spent less time at the rank of lieutenant. Pruitt was not even interviewed for the promotions.

After being passed over the first time, Lieutenant Pruitt asked why she didn’t receive the promotion. She was told that her male colleague’s education made him better suited for the position’s specific duties, which seemed plausible to her.

The situation was different the second time. The second male colleague received a newly created position in the CID, where Pruitt had already been in a command slot for three years. Her superiors asked Pruitt to train the man who had been promoted over her because he had no experience in criminal investigation. When she asked why she had been denied the promotion, she was told she did not have enough experience supervising patrol officers. Knowing that this was not the case and newly aware of the Department’s glass ceiling, she explored filing a gender discrimination complaint. Within a few months, she hired a lawyer and filed her complaint with the New York State Division of Human Rights and the EEOC.

The initial human rights complaint became a federal discrimination lawsuit, and Pruitt found herself subjected to continual hostility and retaliation on the job. Her work as a supervisor in the Patrol Division was examined under a microscope. Notations were made about her demeanor, even about the color of sweater she wore during roll call. Superiors placed counseling memos in her file, even though she had an excellent service record up to that point. Then she was issued two formal reprimands, one of which involved a one-day suspension. She was also denied due process in relation to this internal discipline in violation of departmental procedures. Then, to add insult to injury, in March 2010 another male lieutenant was promoted to captain and placed in command of the Patrol Division, even though he had no previous command-level supervisory experience in that division. Her attorney amended the legal complaint accordingly.

In the end, Pruitt and her attorney settled her discrimination lawsuit against the City of Utica. Next year, she will retire from the Utica Police Department and make a new beginning. She bravely challenged the gender discrimination that created a glass ceiling in the Utica Police Department, and she took great risks in doing so. That is the essence of the Kharas Award -- which recognizes those who stand up for civil rights and civil liberties in Central New York, especially those who stand against injustice at the risk of personal loss. As a result of Grace Pruitt’s tenacity and determination, her willingness to fight for what is right and just, the future for women in law enforcement in Utica and the Mohawk Valley region should be clearer and easier. We applaud her efforts, her courage and her law enforcement career.

Kharas Award Winner Police Lt. Grace Pruitt with Hunter.   Click for more pictures

Grace Pruitt is a lifelong resident of Utica and the mother of three boys. Her marriage to the father of the first two boys ended a couple of years after she became a Utica Police officer. Her son Andrew is now 24. Austin is 20, and her youngest son Hunter is 7. She has raised the boys on her own.
 

The Winner of the Faith A. Seidenberg Award
Honorable Langston C. McKinney
Retired Syracuse City Court Judge

Faith Seidenberg Award Winner Syracuse City Court Judge Langston McKinney

Langston McKinney served as a Syracuse City Court Judge for more than 23 years. However, it is the manner in which he pursued his role in the justice system that makes him stand out as a champion for civil liberties. He never wavered from his commitment to ensuring fairness and due process. He took the time to treat each defendant as an individual, and to ensure that each ruling was carefully crafted and considered. This kind of care can be a rare in the criminal justice system, but it has been central to McKinney’s judicial approach. He explained his approach in a January 2011 newspaper article: “The people we traditionally deal with, the people in need of punishment, are really people in need of care.”

Langston McKinney graduated from Howard University with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1965, but changed direction and graduated from Syracuse University Law School in 1971. He began his legal career representing low-income clients as a staff attorney for Onondaga Neighborhood Legal Services (1971-1973) and the Hiscock Legal Aid Society (1973-1979). It was through working with his clients in these years that he first perceived how the justice system could violate the basic principles of fairness and equality under the law. In 1980, he co-founded Maye, McKinney & Melchor – the first Syracuse law firm headed by African-American lawyers.

Appointed as a City Court Judge in 1986, McKinney became the first African-American judge in Syracuse. On the bench, he has recognized that “the courts have the power and capability to make justice a real thing in people’s lives.” He also perceived that if judges dealt with defendants in “a compassionate and meaningful way” this experience could “move people to move themselves.” Accordingly, his approach was not grounded in a judge’s power to sanction and punish, but in his strong conviction that justice had to be a community effort. This was seen most clearly in his drive to establish a separate court process for people whose alleged crimes and misdeeds were most directly related to an addiction. He listened to advocates, including last year’s Kharas Award winner Marsha Weissman, who convinced him that little would be solved by addressing these cases solely through incarceration. He saw that a more integrated approach was needed, one which incorporated treatment and community-based remedies that focused on the underlying addiction. This was the rationale behind the creation of the Syracuse Community Treatment Court in 1997, now also known as Drug Court. At the time, it was only the fourth court of its kind in the state. Now there are about 180 of these courts across the state, and many more throughout the country.

During his three consecutive terms as a City Court judge, Judge McKinney maintained a passionate commitment to judicial independence and the crucial role that judges play as a check on executive power. In his official statement in a 2007 Judicial Candidate Voter Guide posted on a New York State Courts website, he wrote:

Nothing is more essential to good government under the rule of law than a free and independent judiciary which skillfully and consistently administers justice in a fair and evenhanded manner. All our liberty, all our fundamental freedoms -- indeed, every single privilege that we have come to cherish as citizens in a well-functioning constitutional Republic -- ultimately depend upon the faithful and diligent exercise of judicial power for their protection. Good government is promoted only when that power is exercised by neutral and impartial, knowledgeable and conscientious judges who enjoy full freedom to apply the properly applicable law to every matter pending before them.

Judge McKinney stood by those words, even when it created conflict with the district attorney or the commissioner of jurors. In a 2004 dispute over the DA’s refusal to provide sufficient documentation in felony arraignments, McKinney and another City Court Judge refused to back down, and their stand eventually led the DA to file suit against both judges state court. McKinney saw the DA’s actions as an “encroachments on the dividing line between the authority of the executive branch and the judicial branch.” A state appellate court later ruled in favor of Judge McKinney and Judge Rosenthal. In another dispute the same year, McKinney ruled in a criminal case that, due to racial disparities between the City of Syracuse and the rest of Onondaga County, jurors for City Court trials ought to be pulled from city residents rather than from the entire county, which is the procedure for felony trials. This ruling also led to a lawsuit that went all the way to the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court. Unfortunately, all the court rulings in this case went against Judge McKinney’s position, and to this day juries in City Court are drawn from a pool of residents from throughout Onondaga County.

Langston McKinney has always stood for the core principles of our nation’s justice system. He has never wavered in this stand. It is this steadfast commitment to civil liberties that led us to select Judge McKinney as the second recipient of the Seidenberg Award.

Barrie Gewanter, Susan Horn, Judge McKinney and Sam Young.   Click for more pictures

We are extremely pleased to honor judge McKinney in this way, as a judicial pioneer, as fellow civil libertarian. However, even his most consistent adversary has recognized the characteristics that made Langston McKinney an outstanding jurist. On the eve of McKinney’s departure from the bench, DA Bill Fitzpatrick was quoted by the Post Standard as saying, “I think Langston McKinney is one of the most decent, honorable and ethical people ever to wear a robe. And I’ll miss arguing with him.”