Lance Ito
| Lance Ito | |
|---|---|
| Judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court | |
|
In office 1987–2015 |
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| Personal details | |
| Born |
Lance Allan Ito August 2, 1950 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Spouse(s) | Margaret Ann York (m. 1981) |
| Alma mater | UC Berkeley School of Law |
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 Superior Court of Los Angeles County, California. 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.
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