Clarence Charles Newcomer (January 18, 1923 – August 22, 2005) was a

United States district judge The United States district courts are the trial courts of the United States federal judiciary, U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each United States federal judicial district, federal judicial district, which each cover o ...

of the

United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (in case citations, E.D. Pa.) is one of the original 13 federal judiciary districts created by the Judiciary Act of 1789. It originally sat in Independence Hall in Phila ...

for more than 33 years.

Education and career

Newcomer was born in Mount Joy,

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

, to Clarence S. and Clara Charles Newcomer. He graduated from Mount Joy High School in 1941. Newcomer entered the

V-12 Navy College Training Program The V-12 Navy College Training Program was designed to supplement the force of commissioned officers in the United States Navy during World War II. Between July 1, 1943, and June 30, 1946, more than 125,000 participants were enrolled in 131 colleg ...

, and was a

United States Naval Reserve The United States Navy Reserve (USNR), known as the United States Naval Reserve from 1915 to 2005, is the Reserve Component (RC) of the United States Navy. Members of the Navy Reserve, called Reservists, are categorized as being in either the Sele ...

Lieutenant of an amphibious

landing craft Landing craft are small and medium seagoing watercraft, such as boats and barges, used to convey a landing force (infantry and vehicles) from the sea to the shore during an amphibious assault. The term excludes landing ships, which are larger. Pr ...

in the

Pacific Theater The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, from 1943 to 1946. During that time he earned an Artium Baccalaureus degree from

Franklin & Marshall College Franklin & Marshall College (F&M) is a private liberal arts college in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It employs 175 full-time faculty members and has a student body of approximately 2,400 full-time students. It was founded upon the merger of Fran ...

Lancaster, Pennsylvania Lancaster, ( ; pdc, Lengeschder) is a city in and the county seat of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. It is one of the oldest inland cities in the United States. With a population at the 2020 census of 58,039, it ranks 11th in population amon ...

, in 1944, where he was a member of

Sigma Pi Sigma Pi () is a collegiate fraternity with 233 chapters at American universities. As of 2021, the fraternity had more than 5,000 undergraduate members and over 110,000 alumni. Sigma Pi headquarters are in Nashville, Tennessee. The fraternity ...

fraternity. He then received a

Juris Doctor The Juris Doctor (J.D. or JD), also known as Doctor of Jurisprudence (J.D., JD, D.Jur., or DJur), is a graduate-entry professional degree in law and one of several Doctor of Law degrees. The J.D. is the standard degree obtained to practice law ...

from

Dickinson School of Law Penn State Dickinson Law, formerly Dickinson School of Law, is a public law school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. It is one of two separately accredited law schools of The Pennsylvania State University. According to Penn State Dickinson Law's 2019 ...

(now

Pennsylvania State University - Dickinson Law Penn State Dickinson Law, formerly Dickinson School of Law, is a public law school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. It is one of two separately accredited law schools of The Pennsylvania State University. According to Penn State Dickinson Law's 2019 ...

) in

Carlisle, Pennsylvania Carlisle is a Borough (Pennsylvania), borough in and the county seat of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, United States. Carlisle is located within the Cumberland Valley, a highly productive agricultural region. As of the 2020 United States census, ...

, in 1948. He married Jane Moyer Martin of Lancaster on October 2, 1948, with whom he had three daughters. Newcomer lived in, and was in private practice in, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, from 1950 to 1971. From 1948 to 1950 he was with the law firm of Arnold, Bricker & Beyer in Lancaster. From 1950-57, he was a solo practitioner, later becoming a partner in the law firm of Rohrer, Honaman, Newcomer & Musser. He was a special deputy commonwealth attorney general of Pennsylvania from 1953 to 1954. He was an assistant district attorney of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, from 1960 to 1964, and a First Assistant District Attorney from 1964-68. He was District Attorney of Lancaster County from 1968 to 1972, while he was also a partner with the law firm of Newcomer, Roda & Morgan in Lancaster. He lived in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, and

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

Federal judicial service

Newcomer was nominated by President

Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...

on November 17, 1971, to a seat on the

vacated by Judge Charles William Kraft Jr. He was confirmed by the

United States Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and pow ...

on November 23, 1971, and received his commission on November 30, 1971. He assumed

senior status Senior status is a form of semi-retirement for United States federal judges. To qualify, a judge in the Federal judiciary of the United States, federal court system must be at least 65 years old, and the sum of the judge's age and years of servi ...

on January 19, 1988, but maintained a full case load. Newcomer served in that capacity until his death on August 22, 2005, from

melanoma Melanoma, also redundantly known as malignant melanoma, is a type of skin cancer that develops from the pigment-producing cells known as melanocytes. Melanomas typically occur in the skin, but may rarely occur in the mouth, intestines, or eye ( ...

at his home in Stone Harbor, New Jersey. During his career as a federal judge, Newcomer presided over a number of mob and

public corruption Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense which is undertaken by a person or an organization which is entrusted in a position of authority, in order to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's personal gain. Corruption m ...

cases. In 1980 he ended Topps Chewing Gum's exclusive right to sell

baseball card A baseball card is a type of trading card relating to baseball, usually printed on cardboard, silk, or plastic. In the 1950s they came with a stick of gum and a limited number of cards. These cards feature one or more baseball players, teams, stad ...

s, allowing the

Fleer Corporation The Fleer Corporation, founded by Frank H. Fleer in 1885, was the first company to successfully manufacture bubble gum; it remained a family-owned enterprise until 1989. Fleer originally developed a bubble gum formulation called '' Blibber-Blu ...

to compete in the market.Douglas Martin (August 28, 2005)
"Clarence Newcomer, 82, Longtime Federal Judge,"
''South Florida Sun Sentinel''. In 1985, Newcomer criticized the

Philadelphia Police Department The Philadelphia Police Department (PPD or Philly PD) is the law enforcement agency, police agency responsible for law enforcement and investigations within the City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The PPD is one of the oldest municipal police a ...

for indiscriminately arresting a number Spanish-speaking people after an officer was killed, calling the arrests "unlawful" and "disgraceful". In 1993 he ruled that a law firm's refusal to promote a female associate to partner violated

Title VII The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requir ...

of the

Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and United States labor law, labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on Race (human categorization), race, Person of color, color, religion, sex, and nationa ...

. In 1994, Newcomer invalidated a Pennsylvania State Senate election of William G. Stinson he found to be overwhelmingly tainted by

election fraud Electoral fraud, sometimes referred to as election manipulation, voter fraud or vote rigging, involves illegal interference with the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of a favored candidate, depressing the vote share of ...

, and declared

Bruce Marks Bruce S. Marks (born March 14, 1957) is an American attorney and politician who served as a Republican member of the Pennsylvania State Senate for the 2nd district from 1994 to 1995. Early life Marks was born in Clarksburg, West Virginia. ...

the winner, after finding that "substantial evidence was presented establishing massive

absentee ballot An absentee ballot is a vote cast by someone who is unable or unwilling to attend the official polling station to which the voter is normally allocated. Methods include voting at a different location, postal voting, proxy voting and online votin ...

fraud, deception, intimidation, harassment and forgery." He ruled in 1997 that states cannot discriminate against new residents by paying them lower

welfare benefit Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifical ...

s than they pay longtime residents. Newcomer presided over a 2005 trial in which a jury awarded residents displaced by the 1972 MOVE bombing by the police a $12.83 million verdict against the City of Philadelphia. Among Newcomer's law clerks was Peter York Solmssen, from 1980 to 1982; Solmssen later became General Counsel of

Siemens AG Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad. The principal divisions of the corporation are ''Industry'', '' ...

."Peter Y. Solmssen,"
One Young World.

References

Sources

External links

* Daniel Rubin (August 25, 2005)

''The Philadelphia Inquirer'', Henry Goldman {{DEFAULTSORT:Newcomer, Clarence Charles 1923 births 2005 deaths Judges of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania People from Stone Harbor, New Jersey United States district court judges appointed by Richard Nixon 20th-century American judges 21st-century American judges 20th-century American naval officers United States Navy personnel of World War II People from Mount Joy, Pennsylvania People from Lancaster, Pennsylvania Lawyers from Philadelphia Deaths from melanoma