Lawrence McKenna, New York Judge in High-Profile Cases, Dies at 89

Judge McKenna found that prosecutors had proved “by clear, unequivocal and convincing evidence” that the Trawniki men, as the guards came to be known, had “actively participated” in the liquidation of the Jewish ghettos in Czestochowa and Warsaw, and that Mr. Reimer had played a supporting role.

Judge McKenna’s ruling culminated a 10-year legal battle. In 2005, Mr. Reimer agreed to leave for Germany, but he died before he could be deported.

During the 1990s, Judge McKenna presided over a case against corrupt police officers in a Harlem precinct and a trial that cleared the boxing promoter Don King of fraud charges. And he ruled in favor of typographers at The Daily News and pressmen at The New York Times, who said management was trying to reduce staffing in violation of their contracts. 

In 2009, Judge McKenna denied the government’s request to revoke bail for the disgraced financier Bernard L. Madoff. He upheld a magistrate’s ruling confining Mr. Madoff to his Manhattan apartment under 24-hour guard. Both Mr. Madoff and his wife had to surrender their passports.

“Judge McKenna exhibited a kind of judging that has become increasingly rare in today’s world,” Steven M. Cohen who appeared before him as an assistant United States attorney, said by email.

“He was a Republican — close to a libertarian — but in my dealings with him I never saw a hint of ideology,” Mr. Cohen said. Judge McKenna, he added, “gave every defendant his or her due (and then some) and approached every case and every litigant without a hint of bias.”

Lawrence Michael McKenna was born on Nov. 7, 1933, in Manhattan and grew up in the Douglaston section of Queens, raised by his mother, Catherine (Brosnan) McKenna, a model, after his father, also Lawrence, an assistant district attorney, died when the boy was young.