Judith E. Retchin

The Honorable
Judith E. Retchin
Associate Judge
In office
July, 1992 – December 2010
Senior Judge
In office
December 2010 – Present

Judith E. Retchin is a superior court judge in the District of Columbia.

Early life and career

Retchin grew up in West Babylon, New York. In 1970, she graduated from West Babylon Senior High School. In 1974, she received her B.A. from George Washington University. In 1978, she received her J.D. from Catholic University of America's Comumbus School of Law. She worked as a trial attorney for the Civil Aeronautics Board and joined the Anti-Trust division of the US Department of Justice in 1980.[1]

Prosecutor

In 1983, she was an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.[1]

Retchin was the prosecutor in the drugs trial of D.C. Mayor Marion Barry.[2] She also presided over a D.C. court challenge to the district's handgun ban in 2002.[3]

Judge

President George H. W. Bush appointed Retchin to the bench of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia as an associate judge serving from July 1992 to December 2010, when she became a senior judge.[4]

Jonathan Magbie case

Mary Scott bitterly criticized Retchin, a former prosecutor, calling Retchin a murderer and demanding she be removed from the bench. In 2004 she presided over the trial of Jonathan Magbie, a quadriplegic man who had been arrested for possession of marijuana. Retchin sentenced Magbie, a first-time offender, to ten days in jail despite the prosecution, as part of a plea bargain with the defense, agreeing not to oppose probation. Magbie, who required a ventilator to breathe at night (something the jail did not have), subsequently died four days into his sentence after being transferred to a hospital.[5] The case provoked a series of op-ed pieces in the Washington Post by columnist Colbert I. King.[6]

References

  1. 1 2 DC Courts. "Judge Retchin Biography" (PDF). Retrieved 16 February 2012.
  2. ↑ Michael York and Tracy Thompson, "Barry Used Drugs, Defense Concedes", Washington Post, 2 August 1990
  3. ↑ Linda Greenhouse, "Justices Reject Cases on Right to Bear Arms", New York Times, 11 June 2002
  4. ↑ District Court, "Court biography", District of Columbia Courts, 26 October 2011
  5. ↑ Del Quentin Wilbur, "City Settles in Death Of Paralyzed Inmate", Washington Post, 2 December 2008
  6. ↑ Colbert I. King, "For Jonathan Magbie, a Catalogue of Injustice", Washington Post, 5 December 2008
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