Judge who presided over Traficant trial in 1983 dies at 82

By PETER H. MILLIKEN

milliken@vindy.com

CLEVELAND

Senior U.S. District Judge Ann Aldrich, who presided over the first federal criminal trial of James A. Traficant Jr., died Sunday evening at 82.

Judge Aldrich was the first woman appointed to federal district court in Ohio. A jury acquitted Traficant of bribery and tax evasion charges in June 1983, a little more than a year before Traficant was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Almost exactly 20 years later, she presided over the trial, in which a jury acquitted Richard E. Detore, a Clifton, Va., pilot, of channeling illegal gifts to Traficant.

Detore’s acquittal followed Traficant’s 2002 conviction for racketeering and tax crimes in a jury trial presided over by another federal judge in Cleveland. After his conviction, Traficant was ousted from Congress and served seven years in federal prison.

In her 30 years on the federal court bench, Judge Aldrich presided over numerous cases involving Mahoning Valley residents.

One was a class-action lawsuit that included a Boardman man as a plaintiff, in which Judge Aldrich enjoined the Reagan administration in 1984 from terminating Social Security disability and Supplemental Security Income payments unless it could prove the beneficiary’s medical condition had materially improved.

Judge Aldrich was born June 28, 1927, in Rhode Island, attended Barnard College in New York City and received her law degree from New York University, where she was the only full-time female law student in her class.

She graduated at the top of her law school class and went on to earn a master’s degree in international law and a doctor of juridical science degree from NYU.

Before entering private law practice, she was a staff attorney at the Federal Communications Commission, serving as a U.S. delegate to the International Telecommunications Union Conference in 1959 and 1979.

During the 1960s, she practiced civil and criminal law in Washington, D.C., Connecticut and New York.

Before being appointed to the federal bench in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter, Judge Aldrich was a law professor from 1968 to 1980 at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law.

There, she was the first woman to receive tenure as a law professor, developed one of the nation’s first clinical courses in environmental law and was responsible for that school’s efforts to recruit minority students.

Judge Aldrich is survived by four sons, James, Allen, Martin and William and eight grandchildren.

Arrangements are pending for a memorial service. Donations may be made to the Judge Ann Aldrich Endowed Scholarship Fund at the law school.