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“Vince Sicari, the lawyer, may be free to pursue a parallel career as an actor and comedian,” the state’s highest court ruled. “Once he chose also to serve as a municipal court judge, however, he became subject to the Code of Judicial Conduct.”
The justices pointed to interviews with Sicari that were published in the Bergen Record as proof that he couldn’t ethically separate both vocations.
Sicari, in turn, told the Associated Press that his final decision as a local judge was to not be one anymore. His judicial career is officially adjourned.
The Advisory Committee on Extrajudicial Activities initially put a warning label on Sicari’s standup activities in 2010. It was no gag, either: The committee found that his material could imply bias and a lack of impartiality.
Sicari — whose name in Italian means “hit man” — nonetheless met his commitment for a three-show gig at Caroline’s after the decision while waiting for a booking with the state’s highest court.
He couldn’t beat it with his shtick, though.
His moonlighting bid essentially closed out of town — in Trenton, where the justices found that bits about refusing to serve interracial couples or AIDS patients don’t meet judicial standards and practices.
“The Court cannot ignore the distinct possibility that a person who has heard a routine founded on humor disparaging certain ethnic groups and religions will not be able to readily accept that the judge before whom he or she appears can maintain the objectivity and impartiality that must govern all municipal court proceedings,” the Supremes added.
Sicari, who was also a prosecutor and has done mostly criminal defense work solo — first in Ridgewood and then Paramus — has played several clubs. He’s also been in commercials, warmed up audiences at “The Colbert Report,” and produced the stand-up film “Vinsanity,” which won an award at a Los Angeles film festival several years back.
Yet it was his role in ABC’s “Primetime: What Would You Do?” — in which he portrayed a racist and homophobic character in a “Candid Camera”-type set-up — that turned Sicari’s moonlighting into an ethical issue.
South Hackensack officials knew about his nocturnal passion — same as those attorneys who play in bands or operate nightclubs or other businesses — when they appointed him to the part-time municipal judgeship in 2007.
“In his comedy, he doesn’t get into the fact that he’s a lawyer. He doesn’t get into the fact that he’s a municipal court judge,” defense attorney E. Drew Britcher, of Britcher, Leone & Roth in Glen Rock, told the New Jersey Law Journal. “Most of his performances are driven by improvisation and there is never a mention of his daytime profession.
“Judge Vincenzo Sicari and Vince August are two separate and distinct entities running parallel with one another,” Britcher said.
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