John Docherty '86 Appointed U.S. Magistrate Judge

John F. Docherty '86, an assistant U.S. attorney serving in the District of Minnesota, was recently appointed to serve as a U.S. magistrate judge in St. Paul.

Acting U.S. Attorney W. Anders Folk '01 said: “I am proud that John Docherty has been selected to serve as a Magistrate Judge for the District of Minnesota. John is an excellent AUSA who handled some of our Office’s most difficult and complex cases. I know John will bring the same sense of justice and fairness to the bench that he brought to his work as a federal prosecutor. The people of the District of Minnesota will be well-served by his ongoing commitment to justice.”

Docherty has served in the U.S. Attorney’s Office since 2002. In this capacity, he prosecuted a wide range of cases, focusing on international and domestic terrorism, civil rights cases, and cases involving the illegal export of sensitive U.S. technology. Docherty also served as the office’s Anti-Terrorism Advisory Council (coordinator. Between 2006 and 2008, Docherty left the U.S. Attorney’s Office temporarily to work as a prosecutor at the United Nations’ International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague, the Netherlands. There, he was a senior member of the prosecution team at the trial of General Dragomir Milosevic, the commander of the troops encircling Sarajevo during the last two years of the siege of that city. Milosevic was convicted, following a nine-month trial, of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Prior to joining the the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Docherty worked at the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. and also in the Office of the Minnesota Attorney General, where he worked in the Antitrust Division and the Criminal Division.

Docherty is a current member and past president of the Warren E. Burger American Inn of Court, and a member of the Minnesota Chapter of the Federal Bar Association.