Charlotte Anne Perretta

Perretta was born in 1942[2] and grew up in Hartford, Connecticut, to Lois (née Gubtil) and Armando Perretta, a homemaker and restaurateur.[1] She had two brothers, Mike and James.[1][2]

Perretta attended Mount St. Joseph Academy before receiving a bachelor's degree from the College of St. Elizabeth in 1964 and a law degree from Suffolk University Law School in 1967.[1][3][4]

Early in her career, Perretta represented indigent clients with the Massachusetts Defenders Committee on post-conviction matters.[1][2][5] She then joined the firm of Crane, Inker & Oteri where she argued cases before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and the Appeals Court, which had recently been created.[5][1][2] She co-founded her own firm in the mid-1980s, Keating, Perretta & Pierce, before practicing with Ronald Wysocki.[1][2][5] She worked in both state and federal courts and as an assistant in the Middlesex County District Attorney's office.[4]

In 1978, then-Governor Michael S. Dukakis appointed her to the Appeals Court, the first woman to hold that post.[3][1][2][4][5] She took the oath of office on December 21, 1978, becoming the second youngest appeals court justice ever.[5]

Her portrait hangs in the main courtroom, facing the justice sitting on the bench.[1] When she retired on October 2, 2009, she was the senior associate justice on the court and had authored over 1,700 opinions.[1][2][5][3]

Perretta was the commencement speaker at Endicott College in 1982.[1] She lived in Boston.[1] In 1984, she received an honorary doctorate from New England School of Law, where she taught trial practice for many years as an adjunct faculty member.[5][2][1]

She died April 10, 2015, at the age of 72 in Wallingford, Connecticut.[1][2] Her funeral mass was said at Corpus Christi Church in Wethersfield, Connecticut.[1] Perretta was buried in Mt St Benedict Cemetery in Bloomfield, Connecticut.[6]

• List of first women lawyers and judges in Massachusetts