David Stitt, Fairfax County Circuit Judge, 65

[DGH]

-

David Stitt, 65; Fairfax County Circuit Judge

By Tom Jackman, Washington Post Staff Writer

Fairfax County [Virginia] Circuit Court Judge David T. Stitt, 65, whose
no-nonsense manner and Texas drawl made him a distinctive presence on
Virginia's busiest court, died May 10 [2008] at a hospital in Wilmington,
North Carolina, after suffering a heart attack while vacationing in Topsail
Beach, North Carolina.

Judge Stitt, a well-known figure in legal circles, served as the county
attorney for nearly a dozen years, as president of the Fairfax Bar
Association for a year in the 1980s and as a Circuit Court judge for almost
13 years.

He was also known as a dedicated outdoorsman, enjoying hiking, boating,
playing tennis or commandeering players for a bar association volleyball
tournament. His son recently qualified for the U.S. Olympic rowing team, and
Judge Stitt had been hoping to travel to Beijing this summer.

"He was an individual without pretense, without arrogance, and he saw things
clearly, and he spoke clearly and directly," said former law partner William
D. Dolan III. "You may not like what you were hearing, but you didn't have
to search for nuance. He really had a low tolerance for bull."

Judge Stitt would sit on the bench for long stretches, his chin in his hand,
saying nothing while witnesses testified or attorneys argued. But when
someone raised an objection or asked for help, Judge Stitt was quickly
responsive with rulings that wasted no time or words in getting to the
point.

He also didn't hesitate to take unpopular or unorthodox stands. In 2005, he
heard the paternity case of Andre Chreky, a Washington [DC] celebrity
hairstylist, who had been found by DNA testing to be the father of a teenage
boy. After listening to days of sometimes tedious testimony about the DNA
testing process, Judge Stitt threw out the test results, ruled Chreky was
not the boy's father and criticized the testing company.

"I thought LabCorp's performance was shoddy," Judge Stitt said then of the
testing company. "I think something unfair happened in this case, where a
citizen was put to the greatest extent to defend himself against what really
has turned out to be a moving target as far as where LabCorp is concerned."

In 1998, after a man driving with a blood-alcohol level of 0.15, or nearly
twice the legal limit, crashed into a car near Vienna [Virginia] and killed
a 4-year-old boy, Judge Stitt dismissed the man's drunken-driving case
because prosecutors failed to properly present the toxicology results.

Prosecutors asked Judge Stitt to postpone the case, the man's attorney, Mark
J. Yeager, recalled, but the judge refused. If he postponed the case, Judge
Stitt said, "I'm afraid I will be considered an arm of the commonwealth's
attorney, and that's something I don't wish to be."

Yeager said, "It always takes guts to make the right decision, knowing that
the media is going to blare it all over the place. But he made the decision
that had to be made."

But Judge Stitt was no pushover. On May 2, he imposed two life sentences on
a street gang member who had committed a murder in Reston in 2001. And in
2006, he sentenced an Alexandria [Virginia] area man to 30 years for murder
even though state sentencing guidelines recommended a maximum of 29 years.

"He did a wonderful job on the bench and handled the cases well," said Chief
Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Dennis J. Smith, who joined the bench a month
before Judge Stitt did in 1995. "He was somebody who was very
straightforward but with a great sense of humor."

David Tillman Stitt was born in St. Louis [Missouri] and, when he was 2,
moved to Austin [Texas], where he was raised. He graduated from Davidson
College in North Carolina, where he played freshman basketball for
then-coach Lefty Driesell. Longtime friend Gerard Treanor said Driesell
instantly recognized his former player at a reception many years later.

Judge Stitt entered the Army and served as a Ranger during the Vietnam War,
friends said. He received his law degree from the University of Texas in
1969 and moved to Washington, where he worked first in the corporation
counsel's office, then as an assistant U.S. attorney. He became an assistant
county attorney in Fairfax in 1975, was appointed county attorney in 1980
and left that job for private practice in 1991.

Judge Stitt was a regular at state and local bar association functions,
organizing so many volleyball tournaments that the local bar's volleyball
trophy is named for him. He also spoke regularly to law school classes about
the need for civility and professionalism in the courtroom, Treanor said.

"He always treated me and my clients with dignity," lawyer David Bernhard
said. "And more importantly, he had the sometimes-absent quality in judges
that he never prejudged a case but made up his mind after all litigants had
their say."

Survivors include his wife, Elizabeth Stitt of McLean [Virginia]; and two
children, Samuel T. Stitt of Princeton, New Jersey, and Rachel Elmendorf of
Washington [DC].

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/12/AR2008051202743.html