Gloria Navarro

Gloria Maria Navarro (born May 2, 1967) is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Nevada. Her presiding over the Bunkerville standoff received significant media attention.

Early life and education

Born in Las Vegas, Nevada, Navarro earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1989 from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and a Juris Doctor from the Arizona State University College of Law (now the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law) in 1992. In 1991, Navarro worked as a legal extern for United States District Judge Philip Martin Pro.

Career

In 1993, Navarro worked part-time as a mitigation investigator for a Las Vegas law firm and as a contract law clerk for several organizations. From 1994 until 1996, Navarro worked as an associate attorney for a Las Vegas law firm, and she then worked as a sole practitioner in Las Vegas from 1996 until 2001. On March 4, 2010, the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary voted to send Navarro's nomination to the full Senate for consideration. On May 5, 2010, the United States Senate voted to confirm her by a 98–0 vote. She received her commission on May 6, 2010. On January 1, 2014, Navarro succeeded Robert Clive Jones as Chief Judge. She scheduled retrials of the defendants in that trial for whom no verdict was reached, and trials of the remaining 11 defendants for June 26, 2017. On August 22, 2017, the remaining 4 defendants were found not guilty, and set free after being held without bail since 2016. On January 8, 2018, Judge Navarro dismissed the charges against the remaining 4 defendants "with prejudice", meaning they could not be tried again for the same charges. Navarro found that both prosecutors and the FBI had failed to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense, and had therefore violated a "universal sense of justice" to an extent that nothing short of outright dismissal was appropriate.