Word: connors
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Although highly successful in the senate, O'Connor grew restless and decided to return to law. She ran and won a spot on the Maricopa County Superior Court bench in 1974. Explained her senate colleague Anne Lindeman: "At the end of her term she was at a crossroads. She had to choose between politics and the law. She was more comfortable with the law." Said O'Connor about the law: "It is marvelous because it is always changing...
...trial judge, O'Connor was stern but fair. At least twice, colleagues recall, she advised defendants to get new attorneys because their lawyers had been unprepared. After a Scottsdale mother of two infants pleaded guilty to passing four bad checks totaling $3,500, she begged for mercy from O'Connor, claiming the children would become wards of the state. The father had abandoned the family. O'Connor calmly sentenced the middle-class woman to five to ten years in prison, saying, "You should have known better." But when she got back to her chambers she broke into...
Judge O'Connor did not hesitate to order the death penalty for Mark Koch, then 23, who had been found guilty of murder for agreeing to knife another man in return for a $3,300 fee. The contract killing stemmed from a dispute over drugs. (Koch has since appealed the verdict and been granted a new trial...
...appeals court, O'Connor faced no landmark cases. But she did manage to cut the court's case load by persuading her former colleagues in the senate to modify laws involving workmen's compensation and unemployment insurance. Generally, she upheld trial judges, dismissing appeals from defendants who claimed they had been denied a speedy trial, refused transcripts, and other technicalities. In an article for the current issue of the William and Mary Law Review, she urged federal judges to give greater weight to the factual findings of state courts, contending that when a state judge moves...
...Connor's own intellectual gifts are widely praised, the self-assured woman, who is of medium height and wears such sensible clothes as suits with silk blouses and matching ascots, is neither dull company nor dour. "She never forgets she's a lady-and she'll never let you forget," says Attorney McGowan. Yet Stanford Vice President Joel P. Smith recalls her as "the best dancer I've ever danced with" when he knew her as a member of the Stanford Board of Trustees. She does a nifty two-step and enjoys country music. A superb...