Federal judge Cohill dies
Maurice Blanchard Cohill Jr., a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, died overnight Saturday of a sudden illness.
According to the district court website, he was born Nov. 26, 1929.
Cohill began as a privately practicing attorney. He was nominated to the federal court in 1976 by President Gerald Ford. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on May 18, 1976, and sworn in on June 1, 1976.
He served as chief judge from 1985 to 1992, according to the court website, before assuming senior status on Nov. 28, 1994.
He took inactive senior status in 2016, meaning that while he remained a federal judge, he no longer heard cases or participated in the business of the court.
According to a Pittsburgh newspaper, he is best known for his deciding judgement in a civil rights case that led to the creation of the Allegheny County Jail, where he would also order a cap on the inmate population to prevent overcrowding.
He would also found the nation’s oldest juvenile justice research organization, the National Center for Juvenile Justice in Pittsburgh.
Cohill received an bachelor’s degree in arts and sciences from Princeton University in 1951 and a bachelor of laws degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 1956.
While at Princeton, he was the classmate of Vernon L. Wise Jr., who would go on to be president and CEO of the Butler Eagle.
Cohill served as an usher when Wise married the former Sarah Jayne Cromwell in 1953.
Cohill was a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1951 to 1953. He was in private practice in Pittsburgh from 1956 to 1965. He was a judge of the Juvenile Court of Allegheny County from 1965 to 1968, and then of the Court of Common Pleas of that county until assuming federal judicial service.
On May 4, 1976, Cohill was nominated by Ford to a seat on the federal court vacated by Judge Louis Rosenberg.
