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Former judge Leticia Astacio sentenced to 180 days in jail

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A former judge who once ran a Rochester courtroom is now the one hearing a sentence read aloud.

Leticia Astacio spent years fighting to keep her seat on the bench after a 2016 drunk-driving arrest. On August 13, 2019, that fight ended in Monroe County Court, where the former Rochester City Court Judge was sentenced to 180 days in jail and three years of probation.

The sentence closes out a saga that started with a DUI plea, dragged through a 2018 removal from the bench, and escalated in April 2019 when Astacio was arrested again — this time for allegedly trying to buy a gun while still on probation.

• Astacio was sentenced to 180 days in jail followed by three years of probation on August 13, 2019, for violating the terms of her probation from a 2016 DUI conviction.
• The New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct formally removed Astacio from the bench in 2018 after she resisted repeated public calls to resign following her drunk-driving arrest.
• In April 2019, Astacio was arrested for attempting to purchase a firearm while on probation, was found guilty of the violation, and was remanded to jail ahead of the August sentencing.

The DUI That Started It All

Astacio’s legal troubles trace back to 2016, when she pleaded guilty to driving under the influence. What made the case a statewide story wasn’t the DUI itself — it was what happened next. Rather than step down, Astacio kept hearing cases from the bench in Rochester City Court while calls for her resignation piled up from the public and from judicial oversight bodies.

That refusal to leave voluntarily triggered a formal review by the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct, which spent the better part of two years examining her conduct and fitness to serve. The scrutiny didn’t just cover the DUI arrest itself, but the pattern of behavior that followed it once she stayed on the job.

Removed From the Bench

By 2018, the commission’s proceedings reached their conclusion: Astacio was formally removed from her judicial position. It was the outcome her critics had been pushing for since the 2016 arrest, and it effectively ended her career as a sitting judge in Rochester City Court.

Removal from the bench didn’t end her probation obligations, though, and that distinction is what set up the next chapter of the case.

The Probation Violation That Sent Her Back to Jail

In April 2019, Astacio was arrested again — this time for allegedly attempting to purchase a firearm, a direct violation of the probation terms tied to her original DUI conviction. She was found guilty of that violation and remanded to jail, setting up the sentencing hearing that followed months later.

180 days in jail, three years of probation — the sentence a former judge received for breaking the terms of the sentence she’d already been given.

The August 13, 2019 hearing in Monroe County Court became the culmination of that violation, with the court weighing not just the firearm-purchase attempt but the full arc of noncompliance stretching back to 2016.

Accountability on Both Sides of the Bench

What made Astacio’s case draw sustained attention wasn’t just the jail sentence — it was who was receiving it. A former judge who once presided over cases involving DUI charges, probation violations, and firearm offenses was now standing on the other side of those same statutes. Contemporaneous coverage framed the August sentencing as a case study in judicial accountability, the same standard Astacio had once applied to defendants in her own courtroom.

With 180 days in jail behind her and three years of probation now running, the terms Astacio violated once before are the exact terms she’ll have to answer to again — and this time there’s no bench for her to sit on if she doesn’t.