JUDGE WRENNA WATSON, JUDGE TIFFANY SIZEMORE, JUDGE NICOLA HENRY-TAYLOR
Common Pleas Court now has seven Black judges
Pittsburgh has seen its share of notable African American judges — Homer S. Brown, the Johnson brothers, J. Warren Watson, Cynthia Baldwin, Oscar Petite, Eddie Tibbs, Henry Smith and Walter Little, among others.
But the current happenings inside the walls of the Fifth Judicial District of Pennsylvania, more commonly known as the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas, is astounding for historians. There are seven Black judges among the nearly 50 total in the family, orphans, civil and criminal divisions. Prior to Nov. 2, 2021, Election Day, there were just four, but this past Election Day proved to be one for the ages for Black Pittsburgh.
Overshadowed by Ed Gainey’s historic mayoral victory, the election of three new African Americans to the bench and the re-election of another in Allegheny County holds its own weight.
Wrenna Watson, Nicola Henry-Taylor and Tiffany Sizemore are the newcomers to the county’s Court of Common Pleas, while Elliot Howsie, who was nominated to the bench by Gov. Tom Wolf and confirmed by the state Senate in 2019, was elected to serve a full term.
JUDGE ELLIOT HOWSIE
They are joined by Kim Berkeley Clark, the first Black president judge of the Fifth Judicial District of Pa., Joseph K. Williams III and Dwayne Woodruff, as the seven Black judges in the county’s Common Pleas Court.
PRESIDENT JUDGE KIM BERKELEY CLARK
“The legal profession is one of the least racially diverse in the United States, and the racial disparities in Pittsburgh are some of the starkest. We cannot fully achieve and attain equal justice under the law without a racially and ethnically diverse legal profession,” Jerry Dickinson, associate professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh, told the New Pittsburgh Courier. “As a constitutional law professor, I’m extremely pleased to see the progress we made in the November judicial elections. The recent addition of Black jurists to the state bench is a monumental achievement for Pennsylvania and its justice system, and is a testament to the progress the region is making towards diversifying the bench.”
Two of the three new judges are Pittsburgh natives — Watson and Sizemore. Watson, whose father is the Honorable J. Warren Watson (one of the first elected Black judges in Allegheny County in 1965), lived in Homewood and the Hill District and graduated from Schenley High School. She also graduated from Howard University, in Washington, D.C.
JUDGE WRENNA WATSON
“I was destined to be a public servant. What drives me is knowing that I have the ability to make a difference in the lives of others,” Watson said in a bio published to the Allegheny County Democratic Committee website. “I will never forget the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. I was driven through my neighborhood in the Hill District by my dad, looking at all the businesses that had been ravaged by riots. It was in that moment that he told me I was intelligent, and someday it will be my responsibility to help people and uplift our community.”
Watson’s career includes time as a probation officer, which propelled her to go to law school in the first place. She’s also been an attorney in private practice and a mental health hearing officer.
Watson serves in the criminal division in the Court of Common Pleas.
JUDGE TIFFANY SIZEMORE
Sizemore graduated from Winchester Thurston High School in 1995. She then earned a B.A. in Education from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, near Dayton. She graduated from the Howard University School of Law, cum laude, in 2004. Sizemore then spent eight years as a trial attorney for the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. In her return to Pittsburgh, among her positions was deputy director for the Juvenile Division at the Office of the Public Defender in Allegheny County. In that role for over two years, she managed 11 full-time juvenile defense practitioners and was responsible for the development and training of those lawyers in all aspects of the practice.
Sizemore became associate clinical professor at Duquesne University’s School of Law in 2015, where she developed (and directs) the Youth Advocacy Clinic. Her clinical practice focuses on dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline.
JUDGE NICOLA HENRY-TAYLOR
Henry-Taylor used to tell her high school classmates back in Brooklyn (New York City) that she wanted to be a lawyer.
Looks like she did one better.
The London, England-born Henry-Taylor, born to a Jamaican mother who moved her to Jamaica and then Flatbush (Brooklyn) attended Slippery Rock University at age 17 on a Board of Governors’ full scholarship. After graduating, she enrolled at Duquesne’s School of Law in 1993.
Henry-Taylor became Assistant District Attorney for Allegheny County in 2001, where she ran the county’s Mental Health Court.
In 2010, she began her own private practice, which focuses on all areas of family law and criminal law. Also, Henry-Taylor serves as director of diversity at Duquesne’s School of Law. She has said that protecting families and reform of the criminal justice system is a lifelong mission for her.
Both Henry-Taylor and Sizemore serve in the family division of the Court of Common Pleas. Howsie, the former chief public defender of Allegheny County, serves in the criminal division; Williams, the Manchester-born-and-raised, Yale University-educated judge since 2008, is in the orphans division; and Woodruff, the multiple Super Bowl winner with the Steelers who has been on the bench since 2005, is in the family division. Clark, the president judge who has been with the court since 1999, is also in the family division.
Court of Common Pleas judges are elected to 10-year terms, with a yearly salary of roughly $186,000.
JUDGE DWAYNE WOODRUFF
JUDGE JOSEPH K. WILLIAMS III
“This is the first time in the county’s history that we have a judiciary in Common Pleas Court that more than matches the population of Allegheny County,” voiced Allegheny County Chief Executive Rich Fitzgerald, exclusively to the Courier. “It is vitally important to have a judiciary that’s reflective of the electorate. The fact that the top four vote-getters were all persons of color, including three women, is indicative of an electorate with more willingness to elect qualified individuals regardless of race and gender.”
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