Ricardo M. Urbina (born 1946 in New York City) is a United States District Court judge in Washington, DC.[1] He has taken senior status.
Urbina earned a B.A. from Georgetown University in 1967. He received his law degree from the Law Center at Georgetown University in 1970. He began his legal career as a public defender. He worked for D.C. Public Defender Service from 1970 to 1972. He was on the faculty of Howard University Law School from 1974 to 1981. In 1981 he became Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, and in 1994 President Bill Clinton appointed him to the United States district court.
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Urbina presided over a number of habeas corpus petitions submitted on behalf of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.[2] In October 2008, he ordered the release of a small group of Uighur detainees from Guantanamo into the United States because they are no longer regarded as enemy combatants.[3]
On December 16, 2009 Urbina ordered Guantanamo captive "Saeed Hatim" to be released.[4] According to Carol Rosenberg, writing in the Miami Herald Urbina's release order was sealed, and it "brought the so-called habeas corpus scorecard to 32 losses and nine victories by the Pentagon of detainee challenges from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba." Dean Boyd, a Department of Justice spokesman, told Rosenberg the Government was reviewing its options in how to react to the ruling.
On December 31, 2009--a month before five Blackwater Worldwide security guards implicated in the September, 2007, Nisour Square, Baghdad, shooting incident were to go on trial--Urbina dismissed the case. Urbina said that the prosecutors improperly relied upon statements the guards gave to State Department investigators. The guards were required to make the statements if they wanted to keep their jobs--thus making them inadmissible under the Fifth Amendment. The immunity issue was a problem that lawyers for the government anticipated as long as a year ago when they briefed Congress on the matter. Judge Urbina dismissed the indictment of the five men who pleaded not guilty to voluntary manslaughter and firearms violations: Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard, Donald Ball and Nicholas Slatten.[5]
Dozens of Iraqis, including the estates of some of the victims allegedly killed by Blackwater employees, filed a separate lawsuit last year alleging that Blackwater employees engaged in indiscriminate killings and beatings. The civil case is still before a Virginia court. Blackwater contractors had been hired to guard US diplomats in Iraq. The guards said insurgents ambushed them in a traffic circle. Prosecutors said the men unleashed an unprovoked attack on civilians using machine guns and grenades. The shooting led to the unraveling of the North Carolina-based company, which since has replaced its management and changed its name to Xe Services. [6]
In the wake of District of Columbia v. Heller, Dick Anthony Heller filed suit against the District of Columbia challenging the constitutionality of its laws regulating gun registration and gun restriction. Urbina dismissed Heller v. District of Columbia on 26 Mar 2010.[7][8]
The Transportation Security Administration has taken several thousand images of individuals passing through the Full Body Scanner to demonstrate its effectiveness to TSA employees. The EPIC sued the DHS for the release of the images. Urbina sided with the TSA, arguing that a release of the images would threaten national security.[9]
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