Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
Barbara Ann McDermott, 71, a former Philadelphia judge who, for 40 years, spent nearly every workday inside the city\u2019s criminal courthouse defending, prosecuting, and later presiding over some of the city\u2019s most serious criminal cases, died Tuesday, Aug. 11, following a yearslong battle with a rare form of uterine cancer. <\/p>\n
\u201cHeaven will now be well-run and much more efficient,\u201d her family wrote in an obituary shared online<\/a>. <\/p>\n Judge McDermott spent nearly 14 years in Philadelphia\u2019s Common Pleas Court \u2014 the majority of that time presiding over homicide cases \u2014 before retiring earlier this year. <\/p>\n She was known for running a tough and orderly courtroom, starting her day promptly and putting up with little fuss and few excuses from prosecutors, defense attorneys, police, and defendants alike.<\/p>\n Born and raised in Aliquippa, in Western Pennsylvania, Judge McDermott said in an interview this spring that, growing up, she was a tomboy who pushed the boundaries of her small, steel mill town. She delivered the local paper even when supervisors said the work was only for boys. When leaders of her local Catholic school balked at her request to start a girls basketball team \u2014 saying young women \u201cweren\u2019t strong enough\u201d to play full-court \u2014 she found a coach who would let her.<\/p>\n She attended Seton Hill College, then an all-women\u2019s university outside of Pittsburgh. There, she became passionate about pastoral theology and social justice, and led the student government association.<\/p>\n She initially thought she would follow local tradition and become a teacher or establish a chain of daycares, but then, she said, \u201cI realized \u2026 I\u2019ve been gifted with a brain. I want to do something more than the tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n She took an interest in legal issues and attended Georgetown Law School. (She enjoyed pointing out that she was rejected by the University of Pennsylvania<\/a>.)<\/p>\n She first worked in the attorney general\u2019s office, but longed to practice in Philly, where she said she was inspired by female judges like Lois Forer, Lisa Richette, and Juanita Kidd Stout. <\/p>\n \u201cI wanted to practice around lawyers that were better, and I wanted to practice around a diverse bench,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n She joined the Philly DA\u2019s office in 1984 under Ron Castille\u2019s leadership, but left after several years due to what she described as \u201cdisagreements,\u201d including that she did not support the death penalty.<\/p>\n She started her own practice as a criminal defense attorney, and adopted two daughters, Nicole and Colette, in the early 1990s. She raised them alongside her partner \u2014 and, later, wife \u2014 of 37 years, Jeanne Buckley.<\/p>\n Buckley, in an interview with the Philadelphia Gay News<\/a>, said she and Judge McDermott had been introduced by friends at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church in Germantown<\/a>, a service-oriented congregation they remained a part of through their life.<\/p>\n She told the outlet that<\/a>, early in their relationship, they went to Rehoboth Beach, Del. There, Judge McDermott asked her to close her eyes and placed sparklers around her. This was what life would be like together, she said. <\/p>\n As their life together went on, Judge McDermott was later elected to Common Pleas Court, joining the bench in 2012. Soon afterward, she started overseeing homicide cases. <\/p>\n She presided over numerous resentencings of former juvenile lifers, in one case surprising both defense lawyers and prosecutors when she decided to exonerate one, Terrance Lewis<\/a>, who had been found innocent by a federal magistrate judge but remained in prison on a procedural issue. <\/p>\n She said that work, seeing how people changed over time, was some of the most fulfilling of her career.<\/p>\n