Hon. Michael M. Mohun ’80

Judge Mohun has overseen everything from murders to medical malpractice to child custody issues in Wyoming County, N.Y. But he is most proud of overseeing the county’s Treatment Court since 2014. Under his leadership, the court and the wider legal community assist defendants who suffer from alcohol, drug addiction or mental health issues in securing housing and employment. He also has expanded educational opportunities and medication-assisted therapy programs for county jail inmates.

Judge Mohun was born in Rockville Center, Long Island, in 1953. His family moved to Cowlesville, N.Y., where he lived with his mother. He attended a small school and worked on farms. His father, a former Merchant Marine sailor and wounded World War II veteran, ran a supply line shuttle between the Oakland Army base in California and Saigon during the Vietnam War.

During the summer of 1968, at age 15, the judge flew to Oakland and sailed to Saigon as a sailor aboard an American merchant ship. That ship, the S.S. Southport II, was attacked by the Viet Cong.  He returned safely to Western New York and graduated from Attica High School in 1971, just before the Attica prison riot. He then entered the Coast Guard Academy but did not graduate. He went to work as a sailor on lake freighters and continued sailing intermittently from 1972 to 1978. In 1972, while a deckhand on the S.S. Sidney E. Smith Jr., the ship collided with another freighter and sank near the Blue Water Bridge in Port Huron, Michigan. He and his shipmates were safely evacuated.

In 1976, Judge Mohun graduated from Buffalo State College and took off to see the world on his motorcycle. The following year, he took the LSAT and applied to UB Law, where he started in the fall. His mother had passed when he was in high school, and his father retired and lived in Florida. He was on his own, broke and driven to make a living. He continued to work as a sailor during the summer break between his first and second years of law school. After his second year, the law firm Little and Burt hired him for its mortgage closing firm. Not knowing what to wear, he bought a purple suit with six buttons. It became clear he was not a good fit for the firm, which was to become Saperston and Day. His next job was with a general practitioner, Jim Brown (now Brown Chiari), with whom he worked from 1979 until 1997. When the firm moved to personal injury, he moved on to practice criminal defense.

Judge Mohun was later elected to serve as Bennington town justice; acting town and village justice for Perry and Wyoming County; and acting village justice in Warsaw, Wyoming County, before becoming County, Family, and Surrogate Court judge in Wyoming County and an acting Supreme Court judge in Wyoming County. He is currently president of the New York State County Court Judges Association.