CT Probate Judge With Dubious History Faces Judicial Misconduct Charges In Suspected Land Grab Involving Now-Deceased 92 Year-Old's $1.5M+ Farm

In Southington, Connecticut, the Hartford Courant reports:

• Rare is the chutzpa so shamefully displayed by Southington Probate Court Judge Bryan F. Meccariello. The judge who presided over a court process that expunged Sam Manzo, a humble farmhand, from Josephine Smoron's will, now wants to be the hero.

• Meccariello told the Council on Probate Judicial Conduct this week that it was but a small mistake that he ignored Smoron's will in May 2009 when he gave the OK to the creation of two trusts that allowed the Smoron Farm to be acquired by a local developer.

• The judge said he was merely trying to bring Smoron home before she died in June 2009 at age 92. At the time, Smoron lay dying in a nursing home. Her wish was to give the family farm, worth at least $1.5 million, to Manzo, her long-time caretaker. Meccariello hadn't seen her in more than a year. The man he appointed as her conservator — local lawyer John Nugent — never bothered to meet her. ("I don't speak dementia,'' Nugent artfully explained to the council this week.)

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• Manzo, who mortgaged (and lost to foreclosure) his home to help pay for some of Josephine Smoron's bills and who was removed by Meccariello as her conservator in 2008, could only shake his head. After Meccariello appointed Nugent, "there was no plan,'' Manzo told me.

• Meccariello is the man who allowed the entire mess to unfold, who never would have been caught were it not for Manzo's complaint about a railroad job unfolding in the Southington Probate Court. This is the judge who, as Smoron's sad fate unfolded before his court over her last year, never bothered to find out how she was doing in the hospital or nursing home.(1)

For more, see Southington Probate Court Judge Bryan Meccariello Faces Judicial Misconduct Charges (if link expires, TRY HERE).

See also Judge Meccariello: "No Corruption In Southington Land Grab".

(1) Reportedly, the same probate council admonished Meccariello in 2007 for a habit of mixing his roles as judge, land investor and lawyer for local developers because it had an appearance of impropriety. This time, Meccariello promised the council that there was no "conspiracy to divert or funnel land to a local developer," the story states. He reportedly said: "There is nothing sinister. There is nothing underhanded that went on. This was a mistake. It is being corrected."