Charlotte Anne Perretta (1942-April 10, 2015) was the first woman to sit on the Massachusetts Appeals Court. [1]
Charlotte Anne Perretta (1942-April 10, 2015) was the first woman to sit on the Massachusetts Appeals Court. [1]
Perretta was born in 1942 [2] and grew up in Hartford, Connecticut, to Lois ( née Gubtil) and Armando Perretta, a homemaker and restaurateur. [1] She had two brothers, Mike and James. [1] [2]
Perretta attended Mount St. Joseph Academy before receiving a bachelor's degree from the College of St. Elizabeth in 1964 and a law degree from Suffolk University Law School in 1967. [1] [3] [4]
Early in her career, Perretta represented indigent clients with the Massachusetts Defenders Committee on post-conviction matters. [1] [2] [5] She then joined the firm of Crane, Inker & Oteri where she argued cases before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and the Appeals Court, which had recently been created. [5] [1] [2] She co-founded her own firm in the mid-1980s, Keating, Perretta & Pierce, before practicing with Ronald Wysocki. [1] [2] [5] She worked in both state and federal courts and as an assistant in the Middlesex County District Attorney's office. [4]
In 1978, then-Governor Michael S. Dukakis appointed her to the Appeals Court, the first woman to hold that post. [3] [1] [2] [4] [5] She took the oath of office on December 21, 1978, becoming the second youngest appeals court justice ever. [5]
Her portrait hangs in the main courtroom, facing the justice sitting on the bench. [1] When she retired on October 2, 2009, she was the senior associate justice on the court and had authored over 1,700 opinions. [1] [2] [5] [3]
Perretta was the commencement speaker at Endicott College in 1982. [1] She lived in Boston. [1] In 1984, she received an honorary doctorate from New England School of Law, where she taught trial practice for many years as an adjunct faculty member. [5] [2] [1]
She died April 10, 2015, at the age of 72 in Wallingford, Connecticut. [1] [2] Her funeral mass was said at Corpus Christi Church in Wethersfield, Connecticut. [1] Perretta was buried in Mt St Benedict Cemetery in Bloomfield, Connecticut. [6]
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