Divorce judge jailed for taking bribes

A former judge has been imprisoned after he was convicted of accepting gifts from lawyers in exchange for fixing divorce cases.

Gerald Garson, ex-Brooklyn state Supreme Court Justice, was handed a sentence of three to ten years after he was found guilty of taking items such as cigars, large sums of money, and expensive meals.

After watching footage of himself taking the bribes from divorce lawyer Paul Siminovsky, captured using a hidden camera, the 74-year-old told the court: "I was appalled, embarrassed and ashamed of my demeanour," the Associated Press reports.

He cried in court as he asked for leniency, but the presiding judge did not express any sympathy for him. Before passing the sentence, Justice Jeffrey Berry told Mr Garson: "You abdicated your own moral fibre. What you brought upon yourself is terrible," while prosecutor Michael Vecchione said that he should serve a full term in prison because he was a "disgrace to the bench".

Mr Garson's relationship with Mr Siminovsky came to light in 2002 when Segal Levy reported that her estranged husband, a clients of the lawyer's, had bribed the judge so that he would be awarded custody of the couple's two children.