Mary Werner, ex-state Supreme Court justice and Suffolk's first female administrative judge, dies at 91

Mary Werner, a retired state Supreme Court justice and Suffolk’s first female administrative judge, whose achievements included introducing  the Drug Court and other novel programs, has died. She was 91.

Werner also worked to overturn what she wrote was a "manned" justice system that failed a domestic violence victim killed by her husband.

She was forever haunted by the repeated beatings, slashing and fatal shooting of April LaSalata, 34, in 1988, by a husband who stalked her after judges repeatedly released him on bail. At the time, Werner headed the Suffolk District Attorney’s Office's family crime bureau, where prosecutors tried to protect the mother of two.

"I don't think I have ever cried so hard," Werner wrote in her memoir, "Kraminson Days," self-published in 2013. "And that night through my tears and frustration, my anger at a system ... ‘manned’ by the old boys, I decided to become a judge, to try to change the way women like April LaSalata were treated."

Werner, of Smithtown, died April 30. While hospitalized, she told family and friends she was eager to join her beloved husband, Larry Werner, a doctor who died in 2012 after a heart attack, her family said.

"She set the bar very high, and she was all about compassion for the victims," said her son Larry Werner, of Bellport. "When she went to become a judge, she was all about fairness."

She was appointed a Suffolk County Supreme Court justice, part of the New York court system, in 1991 by then-Gov. Mario Cuomo and named Suffolk's administrative judge three years later.

Counseling over prison

Werner started Suffolk’s Drug Court for people who needed counseling and treatment more than imprisonment, and also launched the nation’s first Parent Drug Treatment Court, offering a holistic approach to keep families with addicted parents together. She created a day care center for litigants, devoted some courtrooms exclusively to matrimonial matters and set up the "Blockbuster" program, designed to speed cases along.

But family members said her proudest accomplishment was the unassuming "Little Grey Book" of resources for people trapped in abusive relationships, which fit in a pocket.

"Hurdles in most people’s minds were opportunities to her," said her nephew Joseph McCormack, a Bronx state Supreme Court justice.

"She would take all those separate entities that make up the court system — the court officers, the corrections department, the police department, the judges, the judges’ staff — and she would get them to help her solve systemic, administrative problems and limitations to justice," he recalled.

The Brooklyn-born Werner always had a little spark of rebellion and feistiness, family members said.

She dropped out of the teaching program at St. John’s University to marry in 1955 while her husband was in medical school, and, according to family lore, she faked a fall on a staircase to get his attention because of his good looks.

She and their three children followed him when the Air Force sent him to the Philippines; upon their return, they settled in Smithtown to raise their seven children.

"We grew up in a household where there was always talk at the kitchen table at dinner time of the news of the day," said her daughter Maryann Hartwick, of Athens, Ohio.

Marched for causes

Werner took her kids and friends to marches and events for the disadvantaged, family members said. When they learned migrant farmworkers were treated poorly, she stopped buying iceberg lettuce, Hartwick said. She marched for equal pay for women and for civil rights, the daughter said.

Once, she and members of St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church in Smithtown confronted a farmer accused of putting his migrant workers in ramshackle quarters, recounted her brother, Edward Phelan, of the Bronx.

He came out with a gun, Phelan said, but the women told him: "Honey, put that gun down. You got to fix the houses." 

Werner did not voice her interest in law until her seven children had achieved a level of independence, telling her friends first, her brother said.

Phelan said her husband was upset at not being told first but promised to change his work hours while she went to school. She earned her law degree from St. John’s University, then worked 14 years as a Suffolk prosecutor, including in the grand jury and rackets bureaus.

"She wanted to make her mark," Hartwick said, "and she knew that sometimes when you come together that you can really make a difference. She was seeing people who weren’t seen and heard."

In addition to her children Larry and Maryann and brother, Werner is survived by sons Kevin, of Stony Brook; Steven, of Apex, North Carolina; Paul, of Roslyn Harbor; and John, of Weatherford, Texas; and daughter Margaret Molloy, of Warren, Rhode Island.

A wake will be held Thursday, 7-9 p.m., and Friday, 2-4 p.m. and 7-9 p.m., at the St. James Funeral Home. A Mass will be celebrated at 9 a.m. Saturday at St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in Smithtown, followed by 11 a.m. burial at St. Patrick’s Cemetery in Smithtown.