Ronnie L. White

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ronnie L. White (born 1953 in St. Louis, Missouri) was a judge on several Missouri courts and is currently a practicing attorney.

White graduated from St. Louis Community College in 1977 and St. Louis University in 1979. He earned a law degree from the University of Missouri–Kansas City in 1983. He worked as a public defender in St. Louis and an attorney in various other government offices and was a Missouri Representative for six years. From 1993 to 1994, he served on the St. Louis City Council. In May 1994, Governor Mel Carnahan appointed him a judge for the Eastern District of the Missouri Court of Appeals.

Carnahan appointed White to the Supreme Court of Missouri in October 1995. He was the court's first African-American Chief Justice, from 2003 to 2005.^[1] White retired from the court on July 6, 2007.

In 1997, President Bill Clinton nominated White for a federal district court seat. White's nomination passed the Senate Judiciary Committee, but ran into resistance from then-Missouri Senator John Ashcroft in 1999. Ashcroft claimed White was "pro-criminal" due to White's opinions in death penalty cases before the Supreme Court and cited opposition from Missouri police associations that were later discovered to be all-white.^[2] Carnahan and other Democrats criticized Republican opposition to the nomination, and it quickly became embroiled with racial overtones and an issue in the Missouri Senate election the following year.^[3] The nomination failed in a party-line vote in the full Senate. Ashcroft's opposition to White came back to haunt him both in the 2000 Senate election (which he narrowly lost for a variety of reasons) and during his confirmation hearings when he was appointed Attorney General.

White is currently practicing law as a partner in the law firm Holloran, White & Schwarz.