Ricardo Urbina, judge who once helped fuel Olympics protests, dies at 78 (2024)

The cause was Parkinson’s disease, said his son Ian.

Mr. Urbina never made it to the Olympics. Yet his attempt to break the color barrier at the New York Athletic Club for training facilities and support helped rally Black demonstrators and energize a powerful — but ultimately unsuccessful — movement for a Black boycott of the Mexico City Olympics.

During the Games, on Oct. 16, 1968, U.S. sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos took their place on the medals podium after the 200 meters. When “The Star-Spangled Banner” began to play, gold medalist Smith raised his right fist, encased in a black glove, in a Black Power gesture. Carlos, who took the bronze, did the same with his left in one of the most storied gestures of protest during the Olympics.

Mr. Urbina never backed the Olympic boycott, saying it would only hurt athletes who worked hard for the moment. Still, he said the civil rights struggles — and later his brief part in the spotlight — helped shape his legal philosophy.

“It was at this point,” he said, “I decide to apply to law school to make a change.”

At Georgetown, he was a middle-distance star and once brought Madison Square Garden crowds to their feet as he edged Seton Hall’s Herb Germann in the 880-yard run in the 1966 championships. The race made the front page of sports sections in New York newspapers. After graduating in 1967, he set his sights on the upcoming Olympics while he was beginning law studies at Georgetown.

He applied in June 1967 to join the venerable New York Athletic Club, seeking any edge in training for the Olympic trials. He already had some of the country’s fastest times in the 800 meters and half-mile, but he had many equally swift rivals. “I regret to advise you,” the NYAC reply said, “that the number of track and field athletes competing for the club had exceeded the quotas.”

To the 21-year-old Mr. Urbina — who was Afro-Caribbean, with a mother from Puerto Rico and father from Honduras — the rejection appeared as racial exclusion. He said later that he never expected to be accepted by the club. He wanted to make a point. The club’s officials denied any allegations of racism, but noted it was a private organization and could decide membership. Only White athletes had competed under its name at that point — which did not change until the 1980s.

Mr. Urbina pressed his case in public. In an open letter to sportswriters, he urged athletes to stand up to “hate, bigotry and discrimination.” National figures such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and boxer Muhammad Ali gave expressions of support.

Before a major indoor track and field meet hosted by the NYAC at Madison Square Garden in February 1968 — to mark the club’s centennial — Mr. Urbina (then widely known as Rick or Ricky) joined calls for Black athletes to stay away to protest NYAC policies. “It would show a bond between athletes,” he told reporters.

Several Catholic-run colleges dropped out in a show of solidarity. The Soviet team canceled plans to compete. Ralph Boston — a Black long jumper who would go on to take bronze in Mexico City — was a no-show.

Some Black athletes were blocked by picket lines, which included members of the militant group the Black Panthers and leaders of the Olympic boycott movement. “Police swung nightsticks as demonstrators swarmed over and through barricades,” the Associated Press reported on one scuffle outside the venue. “Both officers and protesters were knocked down during the melee.”

A track meet to pare down the field of Olympics hopefuls was held in Sacramento that June, about two months after King’s assassination and the riots that broke out in many U.S. cities. Mr. Urbina represented the mostly Black track club from New York known as the Grand Street Boys. He finished last in his heat, which put him out of consideration.

On his way to the airport, his family received news that Mr. Urbina was given a wild card berth for another round of qualifying events at the Los Angeles Coliseum. The top group would go to the deciding Olympic trials at Echo Summit near Lake Tahoe, a test for the high altitude of Mexico City.

With 100 meters left in his heat, Mr. Urbina was amid a pack of runners. All had a shot at advancing to the next stage. Mr. Urbina faded in the final few strides, finishing last, at 1 minute, 49 seconds, but just 0.8 seconds from a spot at moving ahead.

When discussing his approach to jurisprudence during more than three decades on the bench, Judge Urbina was just as likely to talk about mind-body connections or the discipline of sports as he was to reference legal scholars and precedents.

He earned a black belt in aikido, a Japanese martial art, which he began studying in the 1990s after intervening to stop an assault. “I thought I might need to learn some form of self-defense,” he said. He meditated daily on a blue mat in a sunny second-floor room in his D.C. home.

“I try to see where my biases and prejudices that day are hiding,” he told The Washington Post in 2012. “If you don’t find them, they have a tendency to come out at the most unusual of times. … Your mind is like a murky glass of water, and meditating is like letting the sediment settle until the water clears.”

Ricardo Manuel Urbina was born in Manhattan on Jan. 31, 1946. His father was a machinist, and his mother was a secretary.

After graduating from Georgetown University Law Center in 1971, he worked in D.C.’s Public Defender Service until 1972 and then spent two years in private practice. He taught at Howard University Law School from 1974 to 1981, when he left to become an associate judge of the Superior Court in the District.

In 1994, he was nominated by President Bill Clinton to the U.S. District Court and confirmed by the Senate.

During nearly two decades on the federal bench, he was often drawn into high-profile cases with links to the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His rulings on challenges to U.S. detention at the Guantánamo Bay base in Cuba led to the release of prisoners including a group of ethnic Uyghurs who were no longer categorized by the United States as “enemy combatants.”

In a 2009 decision that stunned the Justice Department, he threw out the indictment of five former security personnel from the contractor Blackwater after they opened fire in 2007 in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, killing 17 Iraqis. Judge Urbina concluded that the defendants faced a “reckless violation” of constitutional rights because prosecutors used statements from the security contractors’ private debriefs with the State Department, which had used Blackwater to protect diplomats and other envoys.

The bloodshed further strained relations between the Iraqi government and the Bush administration and underscored America’s increasing reliance on private security contractors in war zones. (Four former employees of Blackwater — which changed its name several times — were later convicted in connection with the 2007 shootings.)

In a landmark ruling for the District in 2010, Judge Urbina upheld the constitutionality of D.C. gun restrictions after a retired security guard, Dick Heller, challenged city rules requiring laws a registration process and restricting assault weapons and extended magazines.

With defendants, Judge Urbina sometimes favored innovative sentencing options rather than harsh sentences. At times, he had defendants write essays on their lives and deeds. He required most defendants to reappear in his courtroom every six months to check on their progress while on probation or supervised release from prison.

“I do not have a passion for punishment,” he told The Post. “If there is a way the court can contribute to the rehabilitation process, it is more likely the person will return to the mainstream.”

His marriage to Joanne Elizabeth McCarron ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife of 46 years, the former Coreen Saxe; a son, Ian Urbina, and daughter, Adrienne Jennifer Urbina, both from his first marriage; two brothers; and one grandson.

Judge Urbina once recalled how he turned down an offer to represent Puerto Rico at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. He added that he felt the New York Athletic Club dispute undercut his chances to make the 1968 Olympic team.

“In hindsight, it leads me to believe that I passed up an opportunity that was later on taken away from me for reasons related to my skin color, and my ethnicity and my race,” he said in a 2021 oral history. “That added to my disappointment I felt. Not only for the denial, but because of the country … how this country felt and was protecting people who felt it was okay to sever.”