The State Commission on Judicial Conduct recommended on Monday that Judge-elect Nora S. Anderson be suspended when she takes office next month in Manhattan Surrogate’s Court and that she not exercise judicial power until charges that she violated campaign-finance laws are settled.

The commission said in a letter to the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, that “public confidence in the integrity of the judiciary, the courts and the administration of justice would be undermined” if Ms. Anderson presided over cases in Surrogate’s Court while facing criminal charges.

Robert H. Tembeckjian, the commission’s administrator and counsel, said in the letter that the commission was not taking a position on the allegations against Ms. Anderson, a lawyer who won a three-way race last month. A grand jury in Manhattan indicted her on Dec. 10 on charges of accepting $250,000 in campaign contributions from her boss and concealing where the money came from. Under state law, individual donors are not allowed to give any campaign more than $33,122.50.

Mr. Tembeckjian said in an interview that since 1978, when the current laws covering the state judiciary took effect, there had been no other cases that he was aware of involving felony charges against a judge who had been elected but not yet sworn in. He said that a felony indictment against a judge or a judge-elect was “rare,” but that it had been the “consistent practice” of the Court of Appeals to suspend an accused judge while the charges were pending.

“In so doing,” he said in the letter, “the court has balanced the presumption of innocence to which the accused is entitled at trial with the need for public confidence in the integrity of the judiciary, the courts and the administration of justice.”

The Court of Appeals notified Ms. Anderson on Dec. 11 that it may consider suspending her until the case was settled.

A lawyer for Ms. Anderson, Gustave H. Newman, did not return a call for comment.

Source: NY Times