More than 150,000 people have signed an online petition to remove a judge who berated a 72-year-old cancer patient last week for failing to maintain his property in suburban Detroit.
A breathless Burhan Chowdhury, of Hamtramck, Michigan, told 31st District Judge Alexis G. Krot during a Michigan state court appearance over Zoom that he was unable to keep his yard in good shape because his cancer treatments made him very weak.
"You should be ashamed of yourself!" Krot said on January 10. "If I could give you jail time on this, I would."
The judge then issued Chowdhury a $100 fine to be paid by February 1, adding: "You've got to get that cleaned up. That is totally inappropriate."
When he repeated that he was "very sick," Krot said it was inexcusable for him to fail to keep up with the maintenance of his yard and remove the grass on his walkways.
"The neighbors should not have to look at that," Krot told him, repeating: "You should be ashamed of yourself!"
A petition titled "Remove Judge Alexis Krot!!!" has since circulated online, and has so far amassed more than 169,000 signatures.
"Burhan Chowdhury received a ticket from the city of Hamtramck for an unkempt alleyway, however as he was explaining to the judge that he couldn't keep up with yard work due to the fact that he had cancer," the petition states.
"As seen in the linked video below, Mr. Chowdhury was out of breath and apologized as well as said since then he had help and cleaned the alleyway. The judge, Alexis G. Krot, shamed him, spoke over him, and told him he could not use cancer as an excuse," it reads.
"We're calling for action from the city of Hamtramck to remove Alexis Krot as a judge!"
The 72-year-old's son, Shabbat Chowdhury, 33, who also attended the Zoom court appearance last week, told The Washington Post that his father was diagnosed with lymph node cancer in 2019.
He said his treatments have affected his father's mobility.
He said the weeds grew out while he had to leave to Bangladesh for three months in 2021. By the time he returned, his father informed him that he had been issued a ticket on August 2. The family cleaned up the yard soon after, he said.
"She was telling my father, a sick person, that he should go to jail. That's ridiculous. You can't give a 72-year-old person jail time for not cleaning an alley," he said. "I was really shocked by it. I didn't expect her to yell at us in this kind of a situation."
According to The Post, Krot was appointed in August 2016 by then-Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, and was reelected in 2020.
Chowdhury's son told The Post last week that the family intended to pay the fine in the coming days.
