Romano DiBenedetto Removed

Romano DiBenedetto, the sole Superior Court judge covering a large swath of Northwest Alaska from Nome, behaved unprofessionally on the bench in ways an Alaska Commission on Judicial Conduct investigation substantiated: using offensive accents to mimic people of other ethnic groups in court, and once keeping an entire courtroom of people waiting for an hour while he watched sports on television. The Commission recommended he be reprimanded for this conduct. DiBenedetto resigned effective April 1, 2026, before that reprimand was finalized.

Separately, a new complaint has since been filed alleging DiBenedetto misrepresented his knowledge of Facebook activity connecting his account to apparent sex workers, allegedly doing so specifically to affect the Commission's handling of the matter. Investigators have also noted his phone number appeared in two separate, closed sex-trafficking investigations from 2021 and 2023. This second matter is a serious, but still-unresolved, pending complaint — it has not been adjudicated, and this entry does not assert what, if anything, DiBenedetto's connection to those investigations actually involved. It's noted here because it's part of the public record of an ongoing state proceeding, not because the underlying facts are yet established.