Eleventh District Court of Appeals Judge Eugene Lucci

Eleventh District Court of Appeals Judge Eugene Lucci

After graduating from college, Judge Eugene Lucci spent his days enforcing the law. By night, he was gaining a greater knowledge about the laws he was sworn to enforce.

Judge Lucci experienced these two sides of the law simultaneously while paying for his legal education working as a Painesville City police officer and later as a sheriff’s detective. Using this background as his platform, he would later run for judge and develop a deep understanding of the dynamics in the courtroom and legal system at large.

After sitting on assignment at the Supreme Court of Ohio on April 23, Judge Lucci has used this knowledge on the bench at every level of the state judiciary.

“You become an attorney to help people. You also become a policeman to help people, but you can only help them one at a time,” said Judge Lucci, who was elected to the Eleventh District Court of Appeals in 2022. “As a judge with a caseload, there are hundreds and hundreds of lives that you can impact.”

After law school, he joined the legal profession while maintaining his status as a police officer for over a decade. This path came with a heavy workload. He said that he wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.

“Spending 13 years seeing people when they are at their worst gave me a great foundation for being a lawyer. Then, after I left the police department, I could represent people on the other side,” said Judge Lucci. “When I became a judge, I was able to put it all together having seen the arresting side, the defending side, and now seeing the judging side. It really helped me understand the cases that were brought before me.”

Becoming a judge gave him the opportunity to help people in a new way and implement practices he would have liked to see in other courtrooms.

“I always wanted judges to approach questioning the jury differently, to give written jury instructions, to allow jurors to take notes, even allow jurors to ask questions,” Judge Lucci said. “When I became a judge for Lake County Common Pleas Court in 2000, I did everything that I couldn’t get trial judges to do when I was a trial lawyer.”

Still, Judge Lucci looked toward others for how to craft his courtroom leadership. He found mentors in police officers, judges, lawyers, and his first law partner, Walt McNamara, who urged him to run for the bench.

Still, none compared to the person who sparked his desire to help others.

“I hope to emulate what I find in the best of all of them, but my No. 1 mentor was my father. He died last year. He was an Italian immigrant with a formal education to the third grade,” said Judge Lucci. “He instilled in me everything – all the virtues I have, I know I got from him.”

At the Supreme Court, Judge Lucci sat in place of Justice R. Patrick DeWine, who recused, in State v. Wogenstahl. The death penalty case questions the constitutionality of a law pertaining to jurisdiction after a man was charged with murder in Ohio when the 10-year-old victim’s body was found in Indiana.The Ohio Constitution gives the chief justice authority to select an appellate judge hear a Supreme Court case when a justice recuses.

Judge Lucci has been dedicated to the law for 49 years. He said he’s proud to be given this opportunity at the Court.

“It certainly is an honor and a privilege,” Judge Lucci said. “It took me a long time to get here.”