Judge Ito
| Lance Ito | |
|---|---|
| Judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court | |
|
In office 1987–2015 |
|
| Appointed by | George Deukmejian |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Lance Allan Ito August 2, 1950 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Spouse(s) | Margaret “Peggy” York (m. 1981) |
| Alma mater |
University of California, Los Angeles (BA) University of California, Berkeley (JD) |
Lance Allan Ito (born August 2, 1950) is an American retired judge best known for presiding over the O.J. Simpson murder case while on the bench of the Los Angeles County Superior Court. He heard felony criminal cases at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in downtown Los Angeles.
Ito was born to Jimmy and Toshi Ito. Both his parents were kept in Japanese American internment camps with their families during World War II. Ito attended John Marshall High School, where he was student body president and received the Scholar Athlete award in 1968. He earned his bachelor's degree with honors from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1972, and his J.D. degree from the University of California, Berkeley's Boalt Hall in 1975. He then joined the Los Angeles district attorney's office in 1977, working in the hardcore gang unit and the organized crime and terror unit, among others.
In 1981, he married Margaret Ann York, the first woman to attain the rank of Deputy Chief in the Los Angeles Police Department and that department's highest ranking woman officer when she retired in 2002. The two met while at an Eagle Rock murder scene.
Republican Governor George Deukmejian appointed Ito, a Democrat, to the Municipal Court in 1987, and then elevated him to Superior Court in 1989.
In 1992, he presided over the trial of financier Charles H. Keating Jr. Keating's ensuing ten-year sentence was later overturned on appeal because Ito had neglected to instruct the jury to determine whether Keating intended to defraud investors. It was the prosecution's position that Keating was liable as a matter of strict liability.
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