Norma Johnson, former chief judge, dies

Norma Holloway Johnson, a former chief judge of the federal court in Washington who presided over the grand jury investigation of President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, died Sept. 18 at her brother's home in Lake Charles, La., after a stroke. She was 79.

The death was announced by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, to which President Jimmy Carter appointed her in 1980. She retired from the federal bench in 2003.

Johnson, who became the court's first black female chief judge, served more than two decades on the federal bench and oversaw dozens of high-profile cases. Known as a no-nonsense jurist, she did not hesitate to lecture defendants about their conduct or hector lawyers who seemed ill-prepared for court.

In sentencing former Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) to 17 months in prison for mail fraud, she told the once-powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee in 1996 that "you capriciously pursued a course of personal gain for you, your family and your friends. You have stained them, as well as yourself."

As chief judge from 1997 to 2001, Johnson oversaw legal issues emanating from grand jury investigations.

One of her most demanding assignments came when independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr began investigating Clinton's relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

In 1998, as Starr was attempting to use a grand jury to gather evidence against the president, Johnson ruled that Clinton could not assert a privilege that would have blocked the independent counsel from questioning White House aides. That decision and others permitted Starr to move ahead with his obstruction-of-justice inquiry of the president.

"She got high marks from both sides for how she handled the legal issues presenting the investigation. You need a firm hand on the tiller in that case, and she was it," said Royce C. Lamberth, chief judge of the District of Columbia's federal court and a former colleague of Johnson's.