At an age when most people are kicking back, he’s still rocking the scales of justice.
View full sizexxxxxxxStew Hancock liked the knottiest cases when he sat on the state’s highest court.
He had an appetite on the Court of Appeals for wading into such complexities as the difference between a catamaran and a monohull in the America’s Cup yacht race.
Nearly two decades later, at the age of 87, Hancock still loves a legal brainteaser. How about figuring out who should recover the debentures — something like bonds — being fought over by a company in New York and a company in Indonesia for property in Singapore?
When Hancock hit the court’s mandatory retirement age of 70 in 1993, he was worried he’d end up sitting in the corner of a law office doing a crossword puzzle, with a senior partner whispering to a subordinate, “For God’s sake, go ask him something!”
Instead, Hancock’s been preoccupied with puzzles of another sort. At an age when most people are kicking back, he’s still rocking the scales of justice.
His legal mind has been in demand across the globe. During the past few years, Hancock has testified in London three or four times, in Paris twice and once in the Hague as the last word on New York law. As an international arbitrator, he’s sat in judgment on complex commercial cases from all over.
It takes him longer to get up a flight of stairs, and he no longer goes on his daily run. Nor does he stand on his head the way he used to do in his office, to get the juices flowing. He still does 40 push-ups a day.
Hancock moved in January 2009 from his downtown office with the law firm of Hancock & Estabrook, to an office with Mitchell, Goris, & Stokes just off Main Street in Cazenovia. He wanted a five-minute walk to work instead of a 45-minute drive, he said. He maintains a friendly relationship with the firm named after his grandfather.
Hancock puts in a full day nearly every weekday, and often comes in on weekends. He cross-country skis to work in the winter and walks in the summer, along a pathway by a creek.
His new officemates say it’s an honor to have a former Court of Appeals judge right down the hall — especially one who revels in lawyerly camaraderie.
“It’s like being with Mickey Mantle,” lawyer Patrick O’Sullivan said.
Hancock’s contemporary, former Court of Appeals Judge Richard Simons, of Rome, is 83 years old and also still works as a lawyer — but not nearly as much as Hancock.
“I’m not amazed,” Simons said of Hancock’s continued workload. “But I’m jealous.”
Hancock’s love of a challenge has led him during the past 15 years to cases that would seem to put him at odds with the position of his Republican Party. He became in the late 1990s an oft-quoted expert on why the death penalty was unconstitutional under New York state law. He handled the appeal of a man convicted of causing the death of a state trooper. And for years he’s volunteered to represent poor people for free through the Hiscock Legal Aid Society.
Has old age turned him from a conservative former chairman of Onondaga County’s Republican Party to a liberal? He acknowledges leaning more to the left, but not that far.
“It was a process of learning more, studying more, maturing,” Hancock said.
Hancock agreed to handle the appeal of James Carncross at the request of Carncross’ grandmother, who lives in Cazenovia. Carncross was convicted of causing the death of Trooper Craig Todeschini in 2006 by speeding away on his motorcycle. Todeschini pursued, then crashed his state police vehicle.
When Hancock argued the case before the Court of Appeals in February, he frequently patted the podium with an open hand as he made his point. In an apparent effect of his age, he had trouble hearing the judges at times. Wearing a bow tie, he appeared to never look at his notes. It’s a result of the way he prepares, running through mock arguments as many times as he can.
He got politely confrontational with one of the judges sitting on Hancock’s former bench.
“If I may finish a sentence?” Hancock asked after being cut off by the judge.
The court ruled against Carncross, who is serving up to seven years in prison. Hancock is trying to get a federal judge to review the case.
Hancock got started in his opposition to the death penalty law in 1995, after he assigned his class at Syracuse University’s law school to take a side and write on it. He collaborated with one student, Alycia Ziarno, and his former law clerk, Annelle McCullough, on an article for the Albany Law Review that said the law was racially and geographically biased.
Hancock went on to assist Albany lawyer Terence Kindlon on a death penalty case.
“It was a chance for him to work in the vineyard,” Kindlon said. Years before, Kindlon had become a fan of Hancock’s for a precedent-setting decision the judge wrote that said the state constitution provided greater protection for people than the U.S. constitution.
Ziarno worked with Hancock on two friend-of-the-court briefs on other death penalty cases. She remembers him writing out the briefs in longhand on a yellow legal pad. One was 187 pages, and he sometimes spent a half-hour on one word, worrying over the inferences people might draw from it, she said.
Hancock still teaches a class to third-year law students at SU called Problem Analysis and Appellate Advocacy. When he started his most recent semester last month, he told his students he hoped to break them out of the mentality that law school necessarily creates: that of people who manipulate the machinery of the law and have lost their common sense.
“I intend to turn you back into human beings,” Hancock told the class.
Hancock’s wife, Ruth, says her husband has always buried himself in his work because he loves it so much. It’s also probably his way of hiding from the world at times, she said. That may have been the case after a devastating setback Jan. 15, 2009 – the day his 58-year-old son, Stewart Hancock III, committed suicide.
Young Stew, former publisher of Eagle Newspapers, was always watching out for his father, making sure he kept appointments and sent thank-you notes, Ruth Hancock said. The judge gave a eulogy at the funeral, saying no one could ask for a better son. He’s rarely talked about young Stew’s death, Ruth said, but he sent her a card on the one-year anniversary. He wrote that they needed to do more for others, in young Stew’s memory, Ruth said.
Hancock’s colleagues say he’s been doing that for years. In a Law Day speech last month in Auburn, he urged lawyers to take on the cases of poor people for free. In that speech, he did what he often does: make fun of himself. He said he was forced to retire as a judge because of the Rule of Statutory Senility. At midnight on Dec. 31 of the year a judge turns 70, he or she instantly becomes senile, according to the fictional rule.
“But there is no prohibition against the judge’s — senile or not — being a lawyer again,” he said. “The implications of this I leave to you.”
Contact John O'Brien at jobrien@syracuse.com or 470-2187.