Alarcón, Arthur Lawrence, 1925-2015

Arthur L Alarcón was a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, to which he was appointed in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter. He had a long and prominent career in law which began immediately following law school graduation at the University of Southern California.

Born in 1925 in Los Angeles as the son of a baker from Mexico, Alarcón attended local schools and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He was the recipient of four Battle Stars and the Combat Infantry Badge, the Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart. Upon returning to Los Angeles, he attended UCLA for two years on the G.I. Bill, and then transferred to USC where he received his B.A. degree in political science and then law degree in 1951 from USC's School of Law.

Following graduation, Judge Alarcón was hired by the District Attorney's Office for Los Angeles and remained in that position until 1961 when Governor Edmund G. "Pat" Brown appointed him legal advisor and Clemency and Extraditions secretary, in addition to serving on the Governor's Special Commission on Narcotics (aka "Dope Commission"). From 1963 to 1964 Alarcón served as the executive assistant responsible for investigations to assist the governor in deciding whether to commute death sentences received by state prisoners. For a brief time, he served as chair of the California Adult Authority, the parole board for men, a position he held until he was named to the Superior Court of California for the County of Los Angeles--a position he held until 1978. From 1978 to 1979, Alarcón--appointed by Governor Jerry Brown, Jr.--served as an associate justice of the California Court of Appeal for the Second Appellate District in Los Angeles.

It was in 1979 that the Republican Alarcón was nominated by then President Jimmy Carter for a seat on the Ninth Circuit bench, becoming the first Latino to sit on the court. He served as an active judge until taking senior status in 1992. The longtime judge presided over many noteworthy cases, including that of Sirhan Sirhan, convicted of assassinating Robert F. Kennedy. Because he was so actively involved in a number of life or death decisions during his career, Alarcón conducted extensive research on the efficacy of capital punishment and, in his later years, he pushed for an overhaul of the state's capital punishment system, arguing that the average lag time between conviction and execution was twice the national average.

Alarcón passed away on January 28, 2015 at his home in Los Angeles.