Stuart Namm, judicial whistleblower of Suffolk corruption in the 1980s, dies at 89 

Former Supreme Court Justice Stuart Namm, who lost his judicial post after exposing a pattern of police perjury in Suffolk homicide cases, prompting a blistering report from the state Commission of Investigation, died at a South Carolina assisted living facility of natural causes on Nov. 30.

Namm, who had beaten cancer three times, was 89.

Years before sweeping corruption investigations ensnared Suffolk’s district attorney and police chief, Namm shone a light on a county system in the 1980s in which prosecutors and police sometimes engaged in flagrant misconduct to earn convictions.

Namm’s role as a judicial whistleblower earned him respect from his peers but also powerful critics, including the Democratic Party, which in 1992 refused to renominate him for reelection, ending his 17-year career on the bench.

“He was a public servant who dedicated his professional life to doing the right thing,” said his oldest son, Gary Namm, 64, of Tampa. “And in doing the right thing, he paid the ultimate price.”

Namm was born in Brownsville, Brooklyn, the oldest of three children, to Paul Namm, a pipe fitter, and Lillian Kramer Namm, a homemaker active in her synagogue.

Stuart Namm received a prelaw degree at the City College of New York before being drafted into the U.S. Army, serving 20 months as a first lieutenant during the Korean War.

When he returned home, Namm took law school classes at night while working full-time for Equitable Life, a financial services company, and later at the Federal Trade Commission as an attorney examiner.

As a teenager, Namm fell in love with Lenore Rhona Abelson and the couple married in 1954. They were married for 42 years and had three children: Gary, Keith Namm, 62, of South Carolina and Suzanne Wolonick of North Carolina. Lenore Namm died in 1996.

In 1964, the family to moved to Stony Brook and Stuart Namm opened a law practice before joining the firm of Baranello, Block & Namm as a trial attorney.

In 1975, Namm ran for Suffolk District Court judge, defeating a popular Republican incumbent by 34 votes. Namm lost reelection in 1981 but the following year, then-Gov. Hugh Carey appointed him to a vacancy on the county court.

With a reputation for setting high bail and doling out stiff punishments, Namm was selected one of three judges to preside over homicide trials in Suffolk.

“I wasn’t asked to try homicide cases because I was a good judge,” Namm later told Newsday. “It was because I was seen as a tough, pro-prosecution judge.”

Namm’s approach would shift in the mid-1980s as he observed — and criticized from the bench — what he believed was a pattern of corruption in Suffolk homicide cases.

The pattern included a 1979 execution-style murder case in which detectives failed to file nearly any investigative reports and auctioned off the answering machine from the victim’s office. In another 1984 murder trial, Namm believed the prosecutor in the case called a jailhouse informant who knowingly perjured himself about hearing the defendant confess to the killing.

In his memoir, “Whistleblower’s Lament: The Perverted Pursuit of Justice in the State of New York,” Namm recalled how, during jury deliberations in the latter trial, he heard someone from the prosecutor’s office shout “You lose, Stu!” as he walked to his car, which had been vandalized with marks from keys.

Refusing to be intimidated, Namm wrote to then-Gov. Mario Cuomo, requesting the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Suffolk's criminal justice system. A three-year investigation by the state Commission of Investigation resulted in numerous forced resignations and police transfers.

One Namm adversary at that time was Thomas Spota, then a homicide prosecutor who would become Suffolk’s district attorney in 2001. Spota was convicted in 2019 on corruption and obstruction charges in connection with covering up the prisoner beating by a Suffolk police chief.

“Namm is a hero because he was the only judge willing to stand up for real justice and equal treatment for all in the face of a corrupt police department and district attorney’s office,” said Robert Gottlieb, a friend and longtime Suffolk and Manhattan defense attorney.

“He was the only person willing to step forward and to say, ‘This is not the way we should do things in America.’ And for standing up for a clean, honest criminal justice system, he sacrificed his professional career.”

Namm moved to Hampstead, North Carolina where he produced several documentaries, including "A Question of Guilt," which raised doubts about the conviction of Martin Tankleff, who served 17 years in prison for killing his parents. In 2007, an appellate court overturned Tankleff's conviction.

"He wasn't afraid of exposing injustice," said Tankleff, now an attorney in Garden City. "He was in the truest sense a fierce advocate for law and for justice. And for doing what's right no matter the repercussions."

In his retirement, Namm was a competitive athlete, winning the National Senior Games at ages 72 and 73 in tennis, swimming, cycling and tap dancing.

He is survived by Nancy Namm, 79, his second wife, to whom he was married 26 years; his three children; son-in-law Richard Wolonick, sister Sandra Rosen Hurwitz, 86, of Florida; brother Joel Namm, 82, of Pennsylvania; six grandchildren and four great grandchildren.

A service will be announced at a future date. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to The University of North Carolina Cancer Center.