Necrology

Samuel Barrett Hickman '51

Oct. 3, 1929-Nov. 16, 2007

Samuel Barrett Hickman ’51, a longtime New York State Supreme Court justice who gained national attention when presiding over the Tawana Brawley defamation trial, was born on October 3, 1929, in Danbury, CT. His parents were Samuel J. and Bernice Mosgrove Hickman. “Barry” Hickman grew up in Carmel, NY, in Putnam County near the Connecticut boarder, where his father operated a general store. He was graduated in 1947 from Carmel High School as third in his class of 34, and, aided by a state scholarship, came to Hamilton that year. He joined Tau Kappa Epsilon and played intramural sports, but above all enjoyed singing and was a member and soloist with the Choir and Glee Club. With a future in the law in mind, he majored in history and political science.

Not many months after his graduation in the midst of the Korean conflict in 1951, Barry Hickman enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. He served for four years and became a member of the
Singing Sergeants of the Air Force Band. After his discharge as a staff sergeant in 1956, he entered Cornell Law School, where he obtained his LL.B. degree in 1959. He then became associated with the law firm of Kent, Hazzard, Jaeger & Wilson in White Plains, NY. Named a partner in 1969, he continued to practice law with the firm for 18 years.

While residing in Brewster and later Mahopac, NY, Barrett Hickman took part in community affairs, serving on the executive board of the Washington Irving Council, Boy Scouts of America, as a trustee of the Mahopac Public Library and the Mount Carmel Baptist Church, and on the board of the Putnam Community Hospital. He was also a past president of the American Lung Association of Hudson Valley.

In 1966, Barrett Hickman, a Republican, began his long career in public service when elected justice of the peace of the Town of Carmel. After serving as town justice for a decade, he was elected district attorney of Putnam County in 1976. Three years later, he was nominated for a county judgeship and again achieved election. In 1985, he sought and won a 14-year term on the New York State Supreme Court for the 9^th Judicial District, which covers the five counties north of New York City. Reelected in 1999, he continued on the bench in the historic Putnam County Courthouse in Carmel until his retirement. 

During his years as a judge, Barrett Hickman presided over innumerable civil cases, many of them mundane lawsuits, such as that of a woman who sued her neighbor because the neighbor’s dog chased her cat. However, in 1997, the modest and mild-mannered justice found himself in the public glare when the notorious Tawana Brawley case, which had captured headlines for a decade, finally came to trial in a defamation suit. Stemming from the alleged 1987 abduction and rape by a group of white men of a black teenager, Tawana Brawley, the suit was brought against three of her advisors, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Alton H. Maddux, and C. Vernon Mason, by Steven A. Pagonis, a Dutchess County prosecutor whom they had accused of participating in the attack. After a grand jury had exonerated him and called the story of the kidnapping and rape a fabrication, Mr. Pagonis sued his accusers.

The trial lasted eight long months in a circus-like atmosphere that at times turned the courtroom into a theater of the judicially absurd. Amidst shouting matches and contempt-of-court threats, Justice Hickman, who became the target of much unwarranted media criticism, summoned all his considerable patience and endurance to see it through while carefully avoiding an ever-threatening mistrial. When the verdict was finally rendered by the jury in 1998, the defendants were found guilty of defamation. It was the end to a marathon nightmare for the dignified and always gentlemanly justice.

Barrett Hickman, who revered the law and was scrupulous in administering it fairly and impartially to all, found great satisfaction in serving on the bench. He succeeded in obtaining two two-year extensions beyond the state-mandated retirement of judges at age 70. When a third extension was denied, he was compelled to retire at the end of 2003. Known for always having a stash of Hershey bars with almonds handy and for his ever-present Labrador dog Yvette, he liked to fish on Lake Mahopac, but especially enjoyed world travel, and many souvenirs of his trips to exotic places decorated his chambers. Left a widower with the death in 1987 of his wife, the former Ruth Hewitt, whom he had wed on September 7, 1952, in their hometown of Carmel, he remarried in 1992. He and his second wife, Valerie Stanley Hickman, Putnam County’s tourism director, traveled extensively. They had only recently returned from a trip to Dubai and were planning one to Aruba when Justice Hickman suffered a fatal heart attack.

S. Barrett Hickman died in Carmel on November 16, 2007. In addition to his wife, he is survived by two daughters and two sons from his first marriage, Diane MacKnight, Deborah Santini; and J. Barrett ’78 and S. Bruce Hickman. Also surviving are five grandchildren and a great-grandchild.  

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