Robert I. H. Hammerman

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Robert I. H. Hammerman (July 17, 1928 — November, 2004) was a Jewish - American judge. He served as an associate judge of the Supreme Bench in the city of Baltimore, Maryland from 1967 to 1982, an associate judge of the Baltimore City Circuit Court, 8^th Judicial Circuit from 1983 to 1998 and its chief judge, from 1984 to 1998. He retired July 17, 1998 and died by suicide in November, 2004.

Contents 1 Background 1.1 Awards and Honors 2 Judicial career 3 Civic activities 4 Suicide 5 References

[edit] Background

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, July 17, 1928, Judge Hammerman attended the Baltimore City College (a high school) and went on to graduate cum laude from the Johns Hopkins University, with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in 1950. Hammerman was accepted to and graduated from the Harvard Law School (at Harvard University) with his Juris Doctor (J.D.) in 1953. He was admitted to Maryland Bar the same year and throughout his career was an active member of the American, Maryland State, and Baltimore City Bar Associations and the American Judicature Society.^[1] He first took his oath as an associate judge on the bench of the Baltimore City Municipal Court on May 1, 1961. He joined the circuit court bench in May 1967, where he eventually served as chief judge from May 1984 until July 1998, when he reached the mandatory retirement age of 70. He had been Maryland's longest serving judge to that point.^[2] After his retirement, Hammerman continued on the bench as a senior judge, working full-time but limited by law to pay for only 120 days of service per year.

[edit] Awards and Honors

Book of Golden Deeds Award, National Exchange Club Man of the Year, Hebrew Noble Ladies Honor Roll for Superior Public Service, Afro-American

Annual Award for Humanitarian Service, National Council of Jewish Women President, Har Sinai Congregation Brotherhood.

[edit] Judicial career

As a judge, Hammerman was known as a fair but tough sentencer and a stickler for detail. Lawyers who showed up even one minute late for court were often verbally reprimanded or fined.^[3] Early in his judicial career, Hammerman was the primary judge for juvenile offenders. He presided over the Juvenile Court for eight years, bringing it into compliance with a 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision guaranteeing the rights to counsel for juvenile defendants. He presided over several high-profile cases, including the child sexual abuse case against John Joseph Merzbacher Jr., a lay teacher sentenced to four life sentences for repeated rape and sexual abuse of one of his students in the 1970s at Catholic Community Middle School in South Baltimore., a parochial school under the auspices of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.^[4]

[edit] Civic activities

Hammerman never married nor had children but he had a strong commitment to the youth in Baltimore City. In 1952, he started a club for Jewish teenage boys called the Lancers. The club's activities included sports, cultural events and debates. Judge Hammerman scheduled guest speakers and set up community action projects for the group.^[5] The club eventually expanded into other areas of the city, bringing in non-Jews as well, some of which went on to to creers in public service, such as Kurt Schmoke, an African American mayor of Baltimore City or Curt Anderson who later became chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland. Many early members shared a connection with City College, the city's elite academic high school from which Hammerman graduated in 1946, and many went on, like Hammerman, to Johns Hopkins University.

[edit] Suicide

On November 11, 2004, the body of Robert Hammerman was found outside his northwest Baltimore apartment, dead of an apparent self inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. The case was ruled a suicide because of, among other things, the letter that Hammerman had mailed the day before to more than 2000 people in and around Baltimore City.^[6] Many of those who received the letters were lawyers or his colleagues on the Bench, though most of the recipients were past and present members of his beloved Lancers club. In the letter he cited the fear of growing old with Alzheimer's, a disease that had taken his mother for whom he had personally cared. Hammerman, however, had never been diagnosed with the disease. "Some may say of me that it is an act of a coward," he wrote in his suicide note. "So be it. It is so easy for one outside the ring to tell the fighter how to fight his fight."

[edit] References