Former Nome Judge Romano DiBenedetto to be disciplined

The Alaska Commission on Judicial Conduct is convening a special meeting next week to make public the commission’s recommendation to the Supreme Court for discipline in the case of former Nome Superior Court Judge Romano DiBenedetto.
DiBenedetto resigned in April after having been on administrative leave since March 2025 as he was under investigation for undermining public trust and breaking judicial ethics canon in a pattern of behavior. The Alaska Court System placed DiBenedetto on leave after court staff reported behavior including incidents when the judge used offensive accents to impersonate people from other ethnic groups and kept a courtroom of people waiting while he watched a sports game on TV.  More allegations followed, prompting the commission to file a new complaint against DiBenedetto, as the body had become aware that DiBenedetto lied to investigators when confronted with the accusation of a Facebook friendship he allegedly had with female sex workers. A Department of Public Safety analyst “recognized Judge DiBenedetto’s name as one associated with two separate closed criminal investigations into sex trafficking,” the complaint said. The judge’s phone number had appeared in two sex trafficking investigations in 2021 and 2023, the complaint said. Although he was not charged with a crime, the commission alleges that DiBenedetto intentionally deceived the commission.
In the meantime, the Nome Superior Court relied on a patchwork of visiting judges to manage the court’s caseload. A recent attempt to fill the Superior Court judgeship resulted in the Alaska Judicial Council not being able to recommend either of the two candidates to the governor for appointment. On August 18, the Alaska Judicial Council came to Nome, held a public hearing and interviewed candidates Elisabeth Mering and John Revis. The council’s vote did not result in at least two sufficiently qualified nominees and decided to re-advertise the position. When the application period closed at the end of October, the council announced that two attorneys have applied for the position in Nome. One is Molly Banas, a 2019 graduate of Regent University Law School and who is currently working as the assistant public defender in Nome. The second candidate is Liz Mering, who was rejected as a candidate in August.
The Alaska Judicial Council is slated to hold another meeting in February 2027 to interview the applicants.
The special hearing of the Alaska Commission on Judicial Conduct discussing the DiBenedetto case, will be on Tuesday, November 17 at 3 p.m. and the public can attend via Zoom.
Find more information at https://acjc.alaska.gov/