Jeffrey Gershuny

Introduction

Jeffrey Gershuny, a New York City Criminal Court judge, was publicly censured by the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct after he pulled his personal handgun in open court and staged what he called “a little experiment” — deceiving a testifying police officer into discussing a “gun” in a shopping bag when the bag actually held a stapler. The Commission’s determination, dated October 2, 2026, found the August 5, 2025 courtroom stunt undermined the integrity of the judicial process; Gershuny stipulated to the facts and accepted the censure. The discipline capped a fall that began when The Post exposed the incident: he was quietly demoted off the felony bench, took a pay cut of roughly $16,000, and was banned from bringing his gun into court.

Background Information

An attorney admitted to practice in New York in 2002 and a Hofstra University graduate, Gershuny worked as a lawyer before being named to the bench in 2018 as an interim Civil Court judge in Queens. He sat on the New York City Criminal Court in Queens from about 2019 to 2024, served in Kings County from about 2024 to 2025 — including as an acting Supreme Court justice hearing felony cases in Brooklyn — and transferred to the Manhattan criminal court bench in 2025; his term runs through December 31, 2031. He routinely carried a licensed SIG Sauer P365 pistol concealed in a holster under his robe, which New York law permits judges of his court to do, though the Commission noted no court policy governed the practice. Before the incident, an NYPD officer had complained to the Commission that Gershuny “exhibits a personal bias and agenda against police officers”; its records showed no prior disciplinary action against him.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Adjudicated judicial misconduct. The Commission on Judicial Conduct sustained its sole charge — that Gershuny intentionally deceived a witness in open court — based on an Agreed Statement of Facts his counsel entered with the Commission’s Administrator on September 11, 2026, and he acknowledged that his conduct was improper and warranted public discipline. The finding is a disciplinary adjudication, not a criminal one: no criminal charge was ever brought over the incident, and the Commission expressly took no position on the merits of his underlying suppression ruling.

On August 5, 2025, presiding over a suppression hearing in People v N.F. — a proceeding to determine the validity of a police search that had recovered a handgun — Gershuny called a recess, went to chambers, and returned with a shopping bag and a stapler. At the bench, out of the view of everyone but court officer Sgt. Jessenia Oyola, he removed his firearm from its holster, ejected the magazine, and laid the gun on the bench; he told Sgt. Oyola he planned to show the gun to the testifying officer and make the witness think he was placing the firearm in a bag when he actually intended to leave it by his foot. Oyola told him she was uncomfortable and telephoned her supervisor, Capt. Erica Mercado, who relayed that her own supervisor had advised against the plan and told the judge not to give the gun to anybody. Gershuny went ahead anyway: he displayed the empty pistol to the courtroom, overruled the prosecutor’s objection, and — behind the bench — secretly placed the gun beside his foot while dropping the stapler into a “Five Below” shopping bag.

He then questioned the officer at length about “what it is about the bag and [the] firearm in the bag that gives off a distinction of it being a firearm,” repeatedly and falsely representing that a gun was inside. The witness repeatedly declined to say he could see a gun, describing only an L-shaped object, and noted that the bag and the object differed from those in the street encounter at issue. At the conclusion of the questioning Gershuny revealed the deception, telling the witness, “I guess what you identified is an L-shaped object, which is a Swingline Stapler.” He suppressed the recovered gun — calling the officer’s account a “convoluted story” — prosecutors declined to prosecute, and the case was dismissed. Commission Administrator Robert H. Tembeckjian said: “Public confidence in the integrity of the courts depends on judges being honest and above-board… Judge Gershuny did not abide by that standard when he engaged in an elaborate deception and essentially tried to trick a witness on a significant evidentiary matter.”

Public Reaction and Consequences

The Post exposed the gun demonstration days after it happened, and court administrators moved within weeks: Gershuny was restricted to hearing misdemeanor cases in criminal court — dropping him from the $232,600 acting Supreme Court salary to the $216,400 criminal court bench, a cut of roughly $16,000 or about 7% — and was banned from bringing the gun into the courtroom, though the Office of Court Administration declined to comment on the demotion. “There’s a lot of happy people in Brooklyn right now,” one law enforcement source said of the demotion. “He wasn’t well-liked.” When the censure was announced on October 13, 2026, the Commission went beyond Gershuny’s own case, urging court administrators to review the rules on judges carrying weapons in courthouses and to ensure court officers are made aware of any weapons present.

Current Status

Gershuny remains a New York City Criminal Court judge assigned to New York County, with a term that runs through December 31, 2031, and the censure — the Commission’s determination dated October 2, 2026, and announced October 13 — stands as his public discipline. Under the Agreed Statement, he no longer brings his firearm into the courtroom, cooperated with the Office of Court Administration and the Commission throughout, and was described as contrite; the Commission, accepting the jointly recommended sanction, wrote that it trusted he had “learned from this experience.” No appeal of the determination has been announced, and whether his misdemeanor-only assignment has changed since August 2025 has not been made public.

Impact on Their Career/Life

For a sitting judge, a public censure is a permanent, publicly searchable mark of misconduct — the Commission posts its determinations and certifies them into its permanent record — and the Gershuny file now doubles as the Commission’s cautionary example in its push to revisit how New York regulates judges’ guns on the bench. The demotion had already cost him his felony docket and roughly $16,000 a year; the censure adds a formal finding that his deception — which the Commission, citing state Court of Appeals precedent, called “antithetical to the role of a Judge” — undermined public confidence in the judiciary. His conduct drew national coverage of the stapler-for-gun swap, and his acknowledgment that he “should not have performed the ’experiment’” now sits in the record alongside the finding of misconduct.

Sources

NY Post, “Gun-toting NYC judge censured by ethics board for bizarre ’experiment’ in court,” Oct 13, 2026 — source
NYS Commission on Judicial Conduct, Determination, “Matter of Jeffrey A. Gershuny,” Oct 2, 2026 (PDF) — source
NYS Commission on Judicial Conduct, News announcement of the Gershuny censure — source
NY Post, “Controversial NYC judge who flashed firearm in court hit with pay cut, gun ban and more: sources,” Aug 22, 2025 — source
@nypost, trigger post announcing the censure, Oct 13, 2026 — source