Cheryl Albrecht Presided Over Portland’s Trial of the Decade. Thirty Years Ago, She Was Judging Punk Bands.

If the name Judge Cheryl Albrecht sounds familiar, it’s either because you’ve had the misfortune of appearing before her in Multnomah County Circuit Court or you follow the news: She recently sentenced MAX train killer Jeremy Christian to life in prison.

Thirty years ago, though, Albrecht, 55, worked as a judge of a different kind: rock critic. As the entertainment editor at Louisiana State University’s student newspaper, she wrote up Soul Asylum and Bad Brains concerts, and conducted “a really kind of embarrassing interview” with industrial icons Skinny Puppy. (She also has a story about getting hit on by Henry Rollins at a Black Flag show in the ’80s.)

A stint as the editorial assistant at Los Angeles underground music magazine Option—a credit that appeared in a Multnomah County voters’ pamphlet—led to a hard-news gig at The Daily Advertiser in Lafayette before she moved to Oregon to attend law school at Lewis & Clark College.

Since becoming chief criminal judge in 2018, Albrecht doesn’t get out to shows like she used to, but she’s still a big fan. “I just love noisy music and small clubs with a local flavor,” she says. Gaytheist is a favorite local band, and she laments the loss of Club 21 and East End, while her current preferred spot is the Kenton Club, where fellow regulars know her as “Judge Cheryl.”

Has she ever run into someone at the bar who she’s seen in her courtroom? “Oh yeah,” she says. “That has happened.”

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Cheryl Albrecht Presided Over Portland’s Trial of the Decade. Thirty Years Ago, She Was Judging Punk Bands.

As the entertainment editor at Louisiana State University’s student newspaper, she wrote up Soul Asylum and Bad Brains concerts—and also got hit on by Henry Rollins at a Black Flag show.