John Garrett Penn *68

John Garrett Penn, former chief judge of the U.S. District Court of Washington, D.C., died Sept. 9, 2007, of cancer. He was 75.

Penn graduated from the University of Massachusetts in 1954 and from Boston University School of Law in 1957. He joined the tax division of the Justice Department in 1961 and then became the division's assistant chief of litigation. From 1967 to 1968, he was a visiting student at the Woodrow Wilson School.

In 1970, Penn became a judge in the newly created D.C. Superior Court, which took over criminal cases formerly tried in federal court. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter appointed Penn to the District Court for D.C. He served as chief judge from 1992 to 1997, then as a senior judge.

Many of the cases tried before Penn involved prominent people, such as the 1980 conviction of a congressman in the FBI's Abscam undercover operation and the 1983 conviction of a former wife of the then-D.C. mayor on charges of conspiracy to defraud the federal government.

Active in community affairs, Penn was a member of Sigma Pi Phi, a black professional fraternity. He is survived by his wife of 41 years, Ann; three children; and two granddaughters.