For Once-Criticized Judge, Tribute at a Harlem Corner
To some New Yorkers of a certain era, the idea that a streetcorner in Harlem would be renamed after Bruce McM. Wright, the State Supreme Court justice, might seem somewhat incongruous.
To be sure, the ceremonial renaming at 138th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, once Justice Wright’s home and power base, is meant to honor a lifetime of accomplishments, including a quarter-century on the bench.
Nonetheless, a predominant chapter in Justice Wright’s judicial career was marked by turbulence and criticism over some of his bail decisions in the 1970s; he emerged from that era with an enduring nickname: Turn ’Em Loose Bruce.
On Tuesday, before the new street sign for Judge Bruce Wright Place was unveiled to cheers and applause from dozens of onlookers, one of the judge’s sons, Assemblyman Keith L. T. Wright, said that the nickname never bothered his father; in fact, it inspired him.
“That was a badge of honor in the community,” he said. “We wore that.”
The ceremonial street-renaming, he said, serves as a reminder.
“We had someone who fought and bucked the system,” Assemblyman Wright said. “We need someone to carry on the mantle.”
Justice Wright, who died in 2005 at 86, joined the bench in 1970, a time of protest and upheaval. He said white judges often treated black defendants unfairly.
“White judges don’t fraternize with us,” he said once in an interview. “What they know about us is what they get from novels, the silver screen or servants in their own homes.”
In college speeches, he said the criminal justice system, by routinely acquitting officers in excessive-force cases, had given the police “a license to hunt down blacks.” And holding to the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits excessive bail, he set off a powder keg when he gave some defendants, some charged with attacking police officers, little or no bail. In 1972, he twice released on $500 bail a man accused of killing a police officer.
The police union, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, through a spokesman, chose not to comment on the street renaming. But besides branding Justice Wright “Turn ’Em Loose Bruce” in the 1970s, the union also said then that he was “the best friend criminals ever had.”
Others — like Mayor John V. Lindsay, who appointed him, and Mayor Edward I. Koch — joined the chorus. Liberals and civil libertarians, however, came to his defense.
Asked why his father stayed steeped in controversy, Assemblyman Wright said on Tuesday: “Racism. Absolute racism. He abhorred racism. Pure and simple.”
The assemblyman recalled that once when he was about 7, he asked his father why he got to work so early — typically 4:30 or 5 in the morning — and worked routinely long hours.
“He told me, ‘No matter what time I get there, the white man’s been there half-hour earlier,’ ” the assemblyman said.
Although Justice Wright had a reputation as being too lenient, a longtime friend, Assemblyman Herman D. Farrell Jr., characterized that perception as “the biggest joke.”
“What people didn’t know, he was not a screaming liberal,” Mr. Farrell said. “He just believed in the law. You weren’t guilty until you were found guilty. But once you were found guilty, he’d bust you up, man.”
The City Bar Association rated his performance on the bench as “decidedly better than average.”
Even Mr. Koch, his opinion perhaps shifting with time, described Justice Wright in an interview on Tuesday as “a brilliant jurist.”
“I disagreed occasionally with his bail decisions,” Mr. Koch added. “But in every case, the City Bar Association upheld his decision as correct.”
Nonetheless, the bail decisions damaged his political capital. “He would never make a political decision,” Mr. Farrell said. “The thing, that you never mess with the police, you did what they wanted you to do? He wouldn’t.”
In 1979, with his 10-year term about to expire and with little hope that he would be reappointed (Mr. Koch has recently said that he would have done so), the judge ran successfully for Civil Court. He was later elected a justice of the State Supreme Court. He served for 12 years before his retirement in 1994.