Judge Leticia Astacio goes to jail

David Andreatta | Democrat and Chronicle

Show Caption Hide Caption Judge Aronson gives Astacio a tongue-lashing in court Judge Stephen Aronson grew visibly furious with Leticia Astacio and gave her an ultimatum that was good for one day. She declined the option and was jailed without bail until a Thursday hearing.

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Rochester City Court Judge Leticia Astacio is in jail.

The embattled judge was taken into custody around 12:15 p.m. Monday at the conclusion of a court appearance in which she rejected an offer from the judge overseeing her drunken driving case.

The deal, posed by Judge Stephen Aronson, would have seen Astacio plead guilty to violating her sentence in exchange for spending 45 days in jail, two years on probation and six months wearing an ankle monitor.

Astacio declined the offer and was ordered by Aronson to be held in Monroe County Jail without bail until a hearing scheduled for Thursday at 1:30 p.m.

It was an eventful day for Astacio that began with a courthouse meeting with her supervising judge at 9 a.m., followed by her arrest and processing at Rochester Police Department headquarters, and then a return to court where she got a tongue-lashing from Aronson before being taken to jail.

More: Judge Astacio will return to 'work' after serving time

The intricacies of Astacio's case are so convoluted that it is nearly impossible for the casual observer to keep track of the saga without starting at the beginning.

Astacio was convicted of drunken driving in August 2016 and was sentenced to what is known as a one-year conditional discharge, meaning she was free to go about her life provided she followed certain conditions.

Those conditions included refraining from consuming alcohol, submitting to any court-mandated tests for alcohol and outfitting her car with an ignition interlock device.

She has since been accused of violating those conditions multiple times, but was only found guilty of one. That finding, last fall, resulted in her sentence being extended until February 2018.

Astacio was summoned to appear in court again last week to address the whereabouts of a urine test Aronson had ordered her to take weeks earlier to determine whether she had alcohol in her system.

Judge to Astacio: "You are self-sabotaging any chance you have to return to the bench." — David Andreatta (@david_andreatta) June 5, 2017

Aronson had ordered the test after her interlock device registered a blood-alcohol-content reading. It remains unclear whether it was Astacio who blew into the device for that reading.

When Astacio failed to appear in court and, thus, to explain why she never took the test he had ordered, Aronson issued a bench warrant for her arrest and charged her with a violation of her sentence.

Astacio's lawyer, Ed Fiandach, had told the court at the time that his client was in Thailand and had no plans to return until August.

Her plans evidently changed after the bench warrant was issued and the state's chief administrative judge directed Astacio to meet with her supervising judge, state Supreme Court Judge Craig Doran, on Monday.

Astacio returned to Rochester over the weekend and arrived at the courthouse Monday for her meeting with Doran in his chambers.

After the meeting, police officers who had executed the warrant for her arrest marched a smiling Astacio in handcuffs, with a dour Fiandach beside her, to police headquarters.

She returned to the courthouse around 11:30 a.m. for her court date with Aronson, who grew visibly furious with her and gave her an ultimatum that was good for one day.

Her choice was to plead guilty to her violation and serve 45 days in jail and two years of probation, and wear an ankle monitoring device for six months, or plead not guilty and take her chances at what might transpire at a future hearing.

"I would suggest trying to resolve the case today, here and now," Aronson said.

After briefly consulting with her lawyer, Astacio declined and Aronson ordered her held without bail until her hearing, which he scheduled for Thursday.

Prior to offering the deal, Aronson angrily accused Astacio of willfully shrugging off the law she was sworn as a judge to uphold and betraying the public trust.

"Your attitude is coming off to be as being contemptuous," Aronson said, adding later, "You are doing everything to show you don't care what happens to your public trust. That's the way it looks to me."

He went one step further: "You are self-sabotaging any chance you have to return to the bench," he said. "To me, your actions are showing almost an air of arrogance."

More: Arrest warrant for Judge Leticia Astacio issued

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Photographs and video of a smiling Astacio in handcuffs drew derision on social media and sent reverberations throughout the courthouse. Even seasoned court deputies said they had never seen anything like it.

Astacio smiled and greeted the gaggle of reporters waiting for her in the fifth floor elevator bank of the courthouse with a playful, "Hi," before being taken away for processing.

Asked about her demeanor, Fiandach speculated that her smile was a nervous reaction.

"We're all different. We all deal with stress in various ways," Fiandach said. "I just wonder whether or not it's just a nervous reaction to stress.

"And I think that, quite frankly, the community is reading probably a little too much into her demeanor at times like this because it may just be the way she responds to stress," he continued. "In no way do I think she's snubbing her nose at the community or the powers that be."

It was not immediately clear why Astacio was not taken into custody upon her return to the United States over the weekend from a trip to Thailand.

Timeline: The case of Judge Leticia Astacio

It could be that her warrant was not entered into a national crime database used by customs officials because her offense — failure to appear in court — was not considered severe enough.

Doran, her supervising officer, stripped Astacio of her cases prior to her conviction and subsequently barred her from non-public areas of the courthouse last fall after she pleaded guilty to violating her sentence for the first and only time.

His meeting with Astacio Monday morning was to give her what he described as "further administrative instruction." Astacio was informed Monday by her supervisors, Doran and City Court Judge Teresa Johnson, that she will be required to conduct research in the courthouse law library Monday through Friday, whenever court is in session.

The most irksome element of the saga for most observers is that Astacio has received her state-mandated salary of $173,700 and benefits throughout her ordeal, despite not performing any judicial duties.

Many critics ask why she continues to get paid. The answer was perhaps put most simply by Aronson in court Monday, when he admonished Astacio for her behavior.

"You're still a judge!" he said.

DANDREATTA@Gannett.com