Lima municipal court magistrate to retire

LIMA — At 83 years old, former Allen County Common Pleas Court Judge Richard Warren has decided to retire from working as Lima Municipal Court chief magistrate, but he’s not slowing down.

Warren was a common pleas judge in Allen County for 24 years until his retirement in 2012, and he said afterward he promised the municipal court two years of work. Those two years turned into 12 years.

“I thought it was time. There aren’t too many people that work at 83,” Warren said about his recent retirement announcement. “I reached the point where my age, the number of years I’ve been doing it, my health is still good, and my wife’s health is still pretty good, and we thought we better take advantage of our health while we still can.”

While he will retire as a magistrate on Sept. 5, he said he’s been approached with other job offers in a similar field where he could work as much as he wanted, but he hasn’t decided if he will take a new position yet. This just proves Warren agrees with the motto, “If you love your job you don’t have to work a day in your life.”

He thought the best part about working in the courts was the relationships and friendships he made, the different challenges he faced daily and the differences he made in people’s lives.

“Sometimes I’ll go to a gas station or something and somebody will come up to me and shake my hand and say ‘I’m so and so, do you remember me?’ and sometimes I wanna duck, and they’ll say ‘I’m so and so, you sent me to prison. I was a smartass kid and you saved my life and I’d like you to meet my wife and daughter.’ I get goose pimples telling you about it, but those are the things that made it worthwhile,” Warren said.

Warren oversaw over 300 jury trials in his career and dealt with high-profile cases like a Leland Avenue arson and murder; a Eureka Street shooting that killed a baby and where Warren gave the suspects the death penalty; and an anesthesiologist who killed his wife.

Other notable accomplishments in his career included being named Ohio Assistant County Prosecutor of the Year in 1984 — as he was an assistant Lima city prosecutor in 1969 and an assistant Allen County prosecutor from 1969 to 1988 — and being the recipient of the Ohio State Bar Foundation’s Ritter Award for Outstanding Ohio Attorney/Judge in 2010.

As a judge, he helped co-found the WORTH Center with other local common pleas court judges in 1992 to try to help the war on drugs. He said it was one of the first community-based correction facilities of its kind in the state at the time with another one in Montgomery County.

“There was a philosophy that everyone ought to go to prison, and the judges felt that wasn’t right and we should be doing what we can for treatment and at the same time teach them responsibility,” Warren said. “That’s the one reason why the WORTH Center was started, to house low-level felonies, most generally those that were involved in drugs, to get them off drugs, get them employment, get them back into the community rather than just warehousing them where nothing got done.”

Warren said two part-time magistrates are still in Lima Municipal Court and will likely take on more responsibilities to fill his role when he leaves.

Reach Charlotte Caldwell at 567-242-0451.