Hon. Shirley Troutman

Justice Troutman was born in Georgia, but her parents moved the family to New York for more opportunity and she grew up in Buffalo. Her father worked at General Motors and her mother was a homemaker. She graduated from the University at Buffalo in 1982 with an undergraduate degree in business administration before attending Albany Law School. Justice Thurgood Marshall’s influence on the legal profession, and the ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, motivated her toward law. Her interests were family law and civil procedure. She especially enjoyed Constitutional law classes. Criminal law also piqued her interest.

Married while in law school, she was pregnant when she graduated and came home to Buffalo to have the baby and study for the bar exam. Her pastor, Bennett W. Smith, met with the district attorney and recommended that she apply to be an intern and work under a practice order until passing the bar.

She quickly fell in love with advocacy. She was taught that as a prosecutor, her role was not to persecute people but to ensure that justice is served. From 1986 to 1989, she worked as an assistant district attorney. Assigned to Buffalo City Court, one of the busiest outside of New York City, she was promoted to Grand Jury after her second child was born, and then Felony Trials. She next applied to the Attorney General’s Office, where she worked until 1992, followed by a stint as Assistant U.S. Attorney, Western District of New York, U.S. Department of Justice, until 1994.

Becoming a Buffalo City Court judge was not planned. Mayor Anthony Masiello appointed her, and she was elected in 1995 to serve a 10-year term. In 2002, she was elected an Erie County Court judge—the first African-American to be elected to that court. In 2010, she was elected an associate justice of the New York State Supreme Court. She was designated to the Appellate Division, Fourth Department, by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Feb. 19, 2016.

She is co-chair of the New York Courts’ Franklin H. Williams Judicial Commission, which promotes racial and ethnic fairness in the courts. Justice Troutman strongly encourages people of color to enter the legal profession. Litigants, she believes, must believe they are being treated with dignity, respect and professionalism.