Friends are remembering Syracuse’s first black judge as an endlessly curious and passionate proponent for justice. City Court Judge Langston McKinney died late Monday at age 79. His long-time friend Syracuse University Law Professor Emeritus Richard Ellison first met McKinney as a law student in the late 1960’s. He says judge McKinney sought fairness while understanding the powers and limits of the law.
“All were part of, I think, the way he saw the saw his role and contributed to the society," Ellison said. "He was willing to raise questions. about taking on the issues of the unfairness that he perceived to be of jury pools in his community, racially unfair pools. So he was willing to explore that and to challenge that when he thought it was needed to be challenged.”
Ellison says being on the "front lines" in city court meant McKinney saw the problems first-hand, which could inform higher courts.
"It forces, even appellate court judges to think about and respond to you because you're in the trenches," Ellison said. "You're seeing the problem and he was able to articulate what that problem was, and if you don't agree with me, that's OK, but at least you have to deal with me."
Ellison says he kept in touch with McKinney over the decades, as recently as a few weeks ago when they went out for brunch. He says McKinney continued to discuss public policy, legal matters, and how to make the justice system fairer for children and the poor.
McKINNEY IN HIS OWN WORDS
In 2018, McKinney joined Ellison and others for a panel discussion hosted by WAER that explored how the city’s high poverty rate impacted access to legal representation. McKinney says he and Ellison served the poor as young lawyers in the early 1970’s under new legal aid laws.
"We were among the first lawyers some people ever had any kind of interaction with," McKinney said. "And we were required to, in order to discharge our responsibility as lawyers to them, we had to understand what their life and style was, and we had to take the knowledge that we had of law as to how to utilize our knowledge, pass it on to them so that we could make help them make the changes in their environment. That would make their life easier."
McKinney carried that philosophy to the bench when he was appointed in 1986. But he was aware that judges sometimes contributed to inequality within the legal system.
“Something that has a tremendous impact on the outcome in any criminal case is whether or not the defendant is free. It really is," McKinney said. "It's an injustice for as many people to be held at the at the justice center here with the bails that are set, and so the source of the injustice at times. That's a reality.”
McKinney often argued that bail shouldn’t be used as a preventive detention, especially for minor crimes, but simply to ensure that a defendant returns to court. McKinney was originally a chemist who came to Syracuse from Florida to work for Carrier. He ultimately turned to law, and graduated from Syracuse University’s College of Law to start his trailblazing legal career.
