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Sterling Johnson Jr., Prosecutor

Turned U.S. Judge in Brooklyn, Dies at
88
He closed a Guantánamo “H.I.V. prison camp” and castigated the
city over its treatment of poor people with AIDS. A former
detective, he had also been a narcotics prosecutor.

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Judge Sterling Johnson Jr. in an undated photo. President

George H.W. Bush nominated him for the United States
Court for the Eastern District of New York in 1991. Office of
Sterling A. Johnson

By Joseph P. Fried
Published Oct. 12, 2022 Updated Oct. 14, 2022

Sterling Johnson Jr., a former police detective who as a federal

judge in Brooklyn ordered the closing of a Guantánamo Bay
detention facility, which he deemed “an H.I.V. prison camp” for
Haitian refugees, and who later ruled that New York City had failed
to adequately assist poor residents with AIDS, died on Monday in
Queens. He was 88.

His daughter Jennifer Johnson confirmed his death, at Long Island

Jewish Medical Center.

Judge Johnson was the state’s special narcotics prosecutor for New
York City in 1991 when President George H.W. Bush nominated him
for the United States Court for the Eastern District of New York,
which covers Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Long Island. He
served on that bench for 31 years.

In 1993, Judge Johnson ordered the government to immediately

close the detention facility that it had set up at the American naval
base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to hold Haitian refugees who were
barred from entering the United States because they had AIDS or
the virus causing it.

The 150 detainees had been among thousands of Haitian “boat

people” who were intercepted at sea starting in late 1991 and who
were found eligible to apply for political asylum in the United
States. But while those free of AIDS or its virus were admitted to
the country to pursue their asylum applications, those infected
were languishing in limbo at the Guantánamo site for up to 19
months.

On Judge Johnson’s order, the detainees were admitted to the

United States to continue their asylum quests.

In 2000, he ruled that New York City had failed to provide adequate
basic services, including emergency housing, food stamps and
Medicaid, to thousands of poor people with AIDS or H.I.V. He
placed the agency that dealt with them under a court monitor.

In his ruling, Judge Johnson wrote that the failures of the agency,
then known as the Division of AIDS Services and Income Support,
had “devastating consequences.’’ In many cases, he said, the
agency had terminated benefits like food stamps without notifying
recipients.

As both a judge and the special narcotics prosecutor, he showed a

pungent wit and a readiness to depart from convention.

When a lagging courthouse reconstruction project reduced the

number of available courtrooms to 10 for the Eastern District’s 15
judges, Judge Johnson refused to postpone a trial session for which
he could not find a courtroom. Hauling two camping chairs out of
his car, he set them up in a park near the courthouse and
designated one as his bench and the other for the court
stenographer. Lawyers and litigants in the trial, a nonjury civil
case, sat on park benches, and a federal marshal shushed chatting
passers-by with “Quiet, court’s in session!”

Judge Johnson, who put himself through college and law

school while working as a police officer, was a special
narcotics prosecutor for New York City before being named
to the bench. via United States District Court

Mr. Johnson was the city’s special drug prosecutor from 1975 to
1991. Named to the post by the city’s five district attorneys, he
headed an office created to investigate and prosecute felony drug
cases throughout New York City. The district attorneys’ offices
were restricted to crimes in their own boroughs, making the
special prosecutor’s office more potent against traffickers
operating across borough lines.

Mr. Johnson defended the controversial drug laws enacted in 1973

under Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller. Critics of the laws said they
imposed unduly harsh prison sentences on low-level dealers — in
some cases minimums of 20 years — but Mr. Johnson said that
“few, if any, drug violators were previously going to jail even after
conviction,” and that “now people are going to jail, and in that Editors’ Picks

respect the law has been a success.”

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However, he also told The New York Times in 1979: “Enforcement Much Easier Than
You Think)
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Sterling Johnson Jr. was born on May 14, 1934, in Brooklyn and
grew up in the borough’s Bedford-Stuyvesant section. His father
Am I Living in an
was a train operator for the New York City subway system (his Illegal Sublet?
daughter said he was the first Black person to hold that job). His
mother, Susan (Howard) Johnson, was a homemaker.

After graduating from Boys High School in Brooklyn, he served in

the Marines for three years. In 1956 he joined the Police
Department, where he rose from patrol officer to detective and
sergeant.

While working for the department, he attended Brooklyn College at

night, earning a bachelor’s degree over eight and a half years,
according to a “Man in the News” profile of him in The Times in
1979. He then went to Brooklyn Law School, switching to night
police work so he could attend classes during the day. He received
his law degree in 1966.

One of his colleagues on the police force with similar ambitions at

the time was Benjamin Ward , who in 1983 became the city’s first
Black police commissioner.

“We worked on the police force together as partners and we went

to school together,” Mr. Ward told The Times in 1979, when he was
the state’s commissioner of correctional services. “Often Sterling
would call at 7 in the morning to ask a question about the law. I
finally had to persuade him to stop because law discussions at 7
a.m. were not pleasing my wife.”

Mr. Johnson left the Police Department in 1967, when he was

appointed an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of
New York, based in Manhattan. He returned to the department in
1970 to head its Civilian Complaint Review Board, investigating
allegations of police misconduct and brutality. He held that post for
four years.

As the city’s narcotics prosecutor in the 1980s, he criticized

President Ronald Reagan for providing what Mr. Johnson
considered too little federal aid for antidrug efforts. The president,
he said in a television interview, offered only “eloquent words and a
bottle of urine,” a reference to Mr. Reagan’s having voluntarily
undergone drug testing to publicize his concern over illegal drugs.

On the bench, Judge Johnson continued to be involved in law

enforcement, helping to establish sentencing policies for the
federal judiciary as a member of the United States Sentencing
Commission from 1999 to 2002. He lectured widely in the United
States and abroad.

And he was long involved with the National Black Prosecutors

Association, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement
Executives, the Presidential Drug Advisory Council and task forces
on promoting minority representation in the judiciary and gender,
racial and ethnic fairness in the courts.

In addition to his daughter Jennifer, Judge Johnson, who lived in

the Douglaston section of Queens, is survived by his wife, Barbara
(Jackson) Johnson; his son, Sterling Johnson III; his sister Muriel
Gamble; and two granddaughters. Another daughter, Alicia
Daniels, died of lymphoma in 2019.

Judge Johnson maintained an active docket of cases until last year.

At the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, when court cases were
being conducted remotely, the courthouse staff advised him to stay
home out of concerns for his health, he said in a 2021 interview
with The Times.

Instead, he decided to leave for work early — so early that he

would arrive at court at about 2:30 a.m. Some colleagues would
realize that the judge was in only by glimpsing him getting
breakfast in the cafeteria.

Alex Traub and Rebecca Davis O’Brien contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 15, 2022 , Section B , Page 11 of the New York edition with the
headline: Sterling Johnson Jr., 88, Detective, Prosecutor and Federal Judge, Dies . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper |

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