Perez, Carlos R.

"Retired"

Reita Pendry was born in the mountains of North Carolina and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina. She received her undergraduate degree from Queens College in Charlotte. After graduation, she worked for three years for a civil rights firm in Charlotte, and it was that experience that caused her to pursue a law degree. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1973. She worked for three years for a legal aid program in North Carolina, doing civil litigation. She then moved to the District of Columbia, where she worked for three years for the United States Commission on Civil Rights and for two years for the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project. With the prison project, she was co-counsel in two prison conditions cases in federal courts in Maine and Pennsylvania.

In 1981, she joined the staff of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. She was a staff attorney and then a deputy trial chief at the Public Defender Service, where she handled serious felony cases at the trial and appellate levels and was responsible for training and supervision of staff attorneys. Much of her work was with clients with impaired mental health or drug and alcohol addictions. She worked closely with treating professionals to fashion sentences which provided treatment opportunities in lieu of or in addition to incarceration.

In 1990, she joined the newly-formed Office of the Federal Public Defender for the District of Columbia. As First Assistant Federal Defender, she tried many serious felony cases in federal court, and was responsible for training and supervision of staff attorneys, law students and interns. Even in the era when United States Sentencing Guidelines dictated federal sentences, she was able to work creatively to devise sentencing alternatives for clients, particularly those with mental health impairments or drug/alcohol addiction.

In 1997, Ms. Pendry was recognized by her colleagues in the criminal defense bar by being awarded the R. Kenneth Mundy Lawyer of the Year Award by the District of Columbia Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys.

Ms. Pendry took an early retirement from the Office of the Federal Public Defender in 2000. She has been in private practice for seven years, working in federal trial courts in the District of Columbia and in North Carolina, federal appellate courts in the District of Columbia and in the Fourth Circuit, and in state appellate courts in North Carolina. She has been counsel in two capital cases in federal court in the District of Columbia. She is currently representing a defendant in capital post-conviction litigation in North Carolina.

Ms. Pendry is on the Criminal Justice Act panels in North Carolina and the District of Columbia.