The Honorable Alison McCarty

Judge Alison McCarty graduated from Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, and obtained her Juris Doctorate Degree from Wake Forest University School of Law in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In 1987, she began her legal career as a Staff Attorney for Judge William Baird of the Ninth District Court of Appeals. She became a Summit County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney in 1989. During her ten-year career as an Assistant Prosecutor, Judge McCarty handled thousands of cases, from low-level drug cases to death penalty murder trials.

As a criminal prosecutor, Judge McCarty personally tried nearly 100 jury trials, and obtained convictions in an overwhelming majority of those cases. Judge McCarty prosecuted one of Summit County's most notorious murder cases in September 1998, obtaining an Aggravated Murder conviction of Captain Douglas Prade, for the killing of his ex-wife, Dr. Margo Prade. That case received national attention, and was seen on Dateline NBC, MSNBC and featured on HBO.

Judge McCarty was appointed to the Akron Municipal Court in May of 1999, where she served for nine years, having been elected in 1999 and re-elected in 2005. As an Akron Municipal Court Judge, she presided over the Akron Municipal Drug Court from 2003 to 2007, and created and presided over the first urban DUI Court in the State of Ohio from 2007 until her election to the Summit County Court of Common Pleas. Judge McCarty was elected Presiding Judge for the Municipal Court in 2005. She was named Committee Chair of the Year by the Akron Bar Association in 2002, awarded the 2005 Urban Light Award from the Department of Public Administration at The University of Akron, received the 2006 Legacy III Criminal Justice Award for Outstanding Service, and is a MADD Red Ribbon Award Winner.

Judge McCarty has long been an advocate for victims, serving on the Summit County Domestic Violence Coalition, the Summit County Fatality Review Committee, and is currently Chair of the Summit County Sexual Assault Coalition. She also co-chairs the Akron Bar Associations High School Mock Trial Committee, a position she has held for nine years. She is a former member of the Junior League of Akron, the Governors Task Force on the Investigation and Prosecution of Child Abuse, and the Ohio Coalition on Sexual Assault.

Judge McCarty was elected to a six-year term on the Summit County Common Pleas Court in November 2008 for the term beginning January 5, 2009.

Judge McCarty has been married to Thomas McCarty for twenty years and they are the parents of two daughters.