BERNE — Attempting to avoid the appearance of impropriety, both town judges, Alan Zuk and Albert Raymond, have recused themselves from a misdemeanor case as it makes its way toward a jury trial.

With no judges available in Berne, Assistant District Attorney Brittany Grome submitted a formal request last week to use another town’s court as an alternative venue for the case charging Marcia Pangburn, a 58-year-old nurse and single mother, with resisting arrest and second-degree obstructing governmental information.

The Enterprise has published several articles on the case since Pangburn’s arrest last summer, when she was found a few hundred yards from her home mourning next to the graves of family members and deputies questioned her and tested her for signs of intoxication.

Albany County Court Judge Peter Lynch has reserved his decision on allowing the transfer while Pangburn’s next scheduled appearance in Berne is March 10.

“I think Mrs. Pangburn should have a jury of her peers, which are from the town where it happened,” Lewis Oliver, her attorney, said Tuesday, repeating his objection to the request during their appearance in front of Lynch on Feb. 18.

Lynch read from the moving papers that Zuk wrote that he had received “correspondence and input from community members,” according to a court transcript from the appearance.

“That certainly would in my view give him the absolutely the basis to recuse himself,” Lynch said in the transcript.

Oliver also said that, if Lynch decides to transfer the case, any decisions about evidence made by Zuk so far should be invalidated

“But that depends on when he received the communications that caused him to recuse himself from that,” Lynch responded.

Calls to the Albany County District Attorney’s Office and both town judges were not immediately returned on Wednesday.

Since Marcia Pangburn was arrested by deputies of the Albany County Sheriff’s Office last July, Zuk has presided over her case, which she originally sought to be dismissed. She has rejected separate offers from the assistant district attorney to plead guilty to the reduced charge of disorderly conduct and to adjourn the case in contemplation of dismissal.

She told The Enterprise she has had to use a loan to pay for legal representation, pursuing her defense because she believes she did nothing wrong.

In the early morning hours in July, police had Pangburn do one last test, the one-leg stand, which the arrest report says she failed. The officer asked her to blow into an alcohol-screening device and she began to walk away, almost out of view in a video recorded from the police dashboard.

When the two officers rushed to stand in front of her and she refused to submit to the screening device, one of the officers asked her to put her hands behind her back. She moved away from them and they grabbed her as she sat down on the pavement of the road, saying she would take the test as they pulled her arms behind her back.

After being taken to the sheriff’s station in Clarksville, Pangburn ultimately gave a .01-percent reading for her blood-alcohol content; police then brought her to her home near Thompsons Lake around 5:30 a.m. She said she had one mixed drink at a house-warming party earlier in the evening.

A concentration of .08 or higher is the legal threshold for driving while intoxicated, but other evidence of intoxication can be used by police, and a reading of more than .05 percent can be used as evidence for a charge of driving while ability impaired.

Judge Raymond has not presided over Pangburn’s case since July, though he has been present in town court for her appearances.

In his objection to the request to transfer courts, Oliver quoted from Raymond’s writing in the moving papers for Feb. 18, arguing that the grounds for recusal were inadequate to show bias.

“Though I feel confident that I would be fair and impartial in hearing the facts at hand, to ensure the appearance of fairness and impartiality to all, I must recuse,” Oliver read from Raymond’s words, according to the court transcript.

Lynch questioned Oliver’s statement about judges’ recusals, saying, if  “based on their review of the case, for whatever reason personal to themselves they recuse themselves from the case, do you have authority to say that or would support your opposition to say, that even though you’re seeking to avoid an appearance of impropriety, you are still required to conduct the case?”

Oliver responded, “Is there a case that says, if a judge says I want to recuse myself and doesn’t give any reason? Can you go behind that? I don’t know of any case that says that.”

It was not clear in last week’s hearing whether Raymond had also received correspondence from community members.

During one of Pangburn’s appearances in town court in September, several of her neighbors were in the audience and expressed frustration, when she got up to leave, that Zuk hadn’t dismissed the case.

“We all know Ms. Pangburn,” Raymond said to the neighbors as he tried to reassure them that a legal process was being followed. “We’re a small town here. That’s the way it is. We’ve had meals together.”