Hon. John M. Facciola

Summary Of Oral History of John M. Facciola

By Elizabeth Runyan Geise

John M. Facciola served as a Magistrate Judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia from 1997 until his retirement in 2015. His oral history was taken by Kali N. Bracey on December 22 and 28, 2009 and on January 15, 2010. The history provides an interesting look at someone who devoted most of his legal career to public service, and who served for several years as a Magistrate Judge in D.C., an important but not well-known part of the federal judicial system.

Judge Facciola was born on April 28, 1945, which was, as he explained, the same date that Benito Mussolini was killed near the end of World War II. Three of his grandparents were born in Italy and the fourth grandparent was born in “Little Italy” in New York City. Judge Facciola grew up in a “gigantic” Italian family in Brooklyn, with an older sister, and three younger siblings. He lived in a three-story house with his extended family, with one set of grandparents and an uncle living on the ground floor, various cousins living on the middle floor, and Judge Facciola’s family living on the top floor. His mother died of breast cancer about the time that Judge Facciolo graduated from high school, and his grandmother then stepped in to help his father raise the family.

Judge Facciola recalled his family as “obsessed” with education and offering “remarkable encouragement of kids.” He started at Regis High School in Manhattan at age 13, which he described as a “Jesuit school for poor Catholic kids.” Judge Facciola paid no tuition, while receiving a “magnificent” education. The courses in high school were “extremely demanding.” Judge Facciola took Latin, French and Greek, along with several other courses, and landed in the middle of the class. He “should have worked a little harder,” but picked up the pace after his mother’s death. He attended College of the Holy Cross, and continued a classical education, with two more years of Latin and Greek.

Judge Facciola entered Georgetown University Law Center in the mid-1960s. His dad, who was an accountant, encouraged Judge Facciola to attend law school; he had seen others rise above him at work because “they had Harvard after their name,” and Judge Facciola’s father “was not about to let that happen to his children.” For his part, Judge Facciola was interested in law because law had both “practical significance” and “superb intellectual content.” He “loved” law school where he met “some of the brightest, sharpest people [he] has ever met.” His time at Georgetown overlapped with a turbulent time in D.C., including the Poor People’s March and the riots following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Judge Facciola did well in law school and served on the Georgetown Law Journal.

Judge Facciola was drafted shortly after the end of law school and served six months active and six years inactive duty with the National Guard. He met his wife, a teacher, when he was in law school and they married after graduation. The couple eventually had two sons.

Judge Facciola’s first job was as an Assistant District Attorney in New York City, serving under the legendary New York District Attorney Frank Hogan. The job was “baptism by fire,” involving a “staggering” volume of cases. District Attorney Hogan’s integrity was “legendary.” His philosophy was that prosecutors “[were] not there to win cases,” but “to do justice.” But after four years, Judge Facciola and his wife relocated to D.C. for personal reasons.

In D.C., Judge Facciola returned to a firm where he had clerked as a law student – Wilkinson, Cragun & Barker. One of the cases Judge Facciola helped handle was the criminal indictment of Maurice Stans, who had been the Secretary of Commerce under President Richard Nixon and treasurer of Nixon’s reelection campaign. The multiple criminal and civil claims against Stans related to improper use of campaign funds, and defense of those cases occupied Judge Facciola for five years. After that, however, the firm began imploding and Judge Facciola realized that he was always the happiest while in public service. So he became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in D.C. in 1982 and remained in public service (in various roles) until his retirement.

Judge Facciola started in the Appellate Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which was headed at that time by Michael Farrell, who was later to become a D.C. Court of Appeals Judge. After four years, Judge Facciola transferred to Civil Division, which was headed first by now Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth and later by now Senior U.S. District Judge John Bates. Eventually, Judge Facciola worked in and later headed Special Proceedings, which handled matters such as collateral attacks on criminal convictions, and litigation involving the D.C. jail and the D.C. metal health facility, St. Elizabeth’s.

Magistrate judges are selected by the district court bench and serve eight-year terms. Judge Facciola was selected on his third try and was sworn in in 1997. After only a few days on the job, Judge Facciola signed a search warrant for the seizure of the infamous blue dress worn by Monica Lewinsky during an alleged tryst with President Bill Clinton. As he explained, the “wonderful thing about this job,” is that “you never know what in the world is going to come in the door.”

Judge Facciola handled several other interesting cases, including a lawsuit involving the potential destruction of back-up tapes of White House emails. He wrote extensively; on average, he issued about 40 opinions a year. He conducted many mediations, which required “the patience of a saint” and a box of Kleenex in his office (for weeping litigants). During Judge Facciola’s tenure, the D.C. magistrates “g[ot] along famously,” with the magistrates always willing to help each other and trying to have lunch together every day. Judge Facciola was particularly close to Magistrate Judge Alan Kay, who he credits with teaching him an “enormous amount” about mediation. He and Judge Kay were “very close,” and had very similar senses of humor, including a shared fondness for “old comics who do what is called Yiddish shtick”.

Over the years, Judge Facciola had many wonderful clerks, most of whom were female. He described a good clerk as one who has “the ability to stand at the cliff and say “no, Judge.’”

In the early 2000s, Judge Facciola began to develop an expertise in electronic discovery. He was involved in the Sedona Institute for many years; among other things, that group helps develop best practices for electronic discovery in the federal courts. Judge Facciola became a proponent of the principle of “marginal utility,” which he described as an assessment by a court as to whether a request for additional electronic discovery by a party is worth the additional cost. He played a role in the development of Federal Rule of Evidence 502, which governs the inadvertent disclosure of privileged material during discovery; he characterized development of the rule as the “judiciary at its very best,” because the judiciary saw a problem and developed a solution.

Judge Facciola described the qualities of a good lawyer as someone with a “good sense of proportion between resources and results.” A good magistrate judge has “patience, patience, patience.”

This oral history is a captivating account of a long career in public service and gives insight into the job of a Magistrate Judge in the D.C. federal district court. It is very much worth reading.