NEW YORK JUSTICE - Joel Goldberg

            New York Justice is the story of Judge Goldberg’s courtroom journey from rookie prosecutor in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office to one of New York’s most experienced criminal trial judges.  As a new prosecutor right out of law school, Judge Goldberg made his share of mistakes, which are recounted with humor and self-deprecation.  The stories of his criminal trials and appeals reveal an inside look into how a young lawyer confronts the variety of legal, ethical, and practical problems in these cases from the rare dual perspective of a prosecutor who did both trials and appeals.

             In the second part of New York Justice, Judge Goldberg gives his insights into   his Supreme Court trials covering the full range of state law crimes.  These cases, presented in short-story style, include a naked man running down the street escaping a sexual assault, a Black Hasidic Jew who was an alleged serial rapist, a double murder where the victims’ body parts were cut up with a circular saw, an alleged Mafia killing ordered by John Gotti where there was information received that a juror might be killed during the trial, and a police officer who praised police brutality on social media.

            The final section of New York Justice contains some of Judge Goldberg’s memorable experiences both as a prosecutor and a judge, including a wedding he officiated on a boat and a problem with the best man being allowed to attend, his assignment to be a judge in Manhattan at a court session beginning at 1:00 am on January 1, 1988 with a reporter from the New York Times sitting on the bench next to him, and his courtroom encounters when he was a prosecutor with famed civil rights attorney William Kunstler and with a judge who improperly put Judge Goldberg’s supervisor in jail for contempt of court.

            Judge Goldberg has lectured extensively to bar associations and judicial conferences and has had more than 50 of his written opinions published in New York's official legal publication of court decisions. His decades of courtroom experience and in-depth understanding of the law has given him the extraordinary ability to describe his career and his cases in both an entertaining and educational style that will bring enjoyment and an appreciation of the criminal trial process to his readers.