Janet Reno (lahir di Miami, Florida, 21 Juli 1938; umur 78 tahun) adalah Jaksa Agung Amerika Serikat dari tahun 1993 hingga 2001. Presiden Bill Clinton menunjuknya sebagai Jaksa Agung pada 1 Februari 1993, dan mendapat persetujuan Senat Amerika Serikat pada 11 Maret 1993. Janet Reno adalah wanita pertama yang menjadi Jaksa Agung Amerika Serikat, dan terlama menjabat setelah William Wirt. Janet Reno dilahirkan dari ayah bernama Henry Reno (nama keluarga asli, Rasmussen) asal Denmark dan ibu bernama Jane Wood. Adiknya berjumlah tiga orang. Ayahnya beremigrasi ke Amerika dan selama 43 tahun berkarier sebagai wartawan bidang kepolisian untuk harian Miami Herald.[2] Ibunya menjadi wartawati investigasi untuk harian Miami News setelah selesai membesarkan anak-anak. Reno bersekolah di Miami-Dade County, Florida. Di sekolah, ia menjadi juara debat, dan sebagai lulusan terbaik, menyampaikan pidato perpisahan di Sekolah Menengah Atas Coral Gables. Pada tahun 1956, Reno mulai kuliah Universitas Cornell di Ithaca, New York dan lulus tahun 1960 dengan gelar di bidang kimia. Sewaktu mahasiswa, ia tinggal di asrama putri Balch Hall dan menjadi ketua Women's Self-Government Association. Pada tahun 1960, Reno diterima di Sekolah Hukum Harvard sebagai salah satu dari enam belas wanita di kelas dari total 500 mahasiswa. Tiga tahun berikutnya, ia lulus dari Harvard dengan gelar LL.B. Reno terpilih sebagai direktur staf Komite Yudisial Dewan Perwakilan Florida pada tahun 1971, dan membantu merevisi sistem peradilan Florida. Pada tahun 1973, ia bekerja di Kantor Jaksa Negara Bagian di Dade County (sekarang Miami-Dade County). Gubernur Reubin Askew mengangkatnya sebagai Jaksa Agung Dade County pada November 1978, dan kemudian terpilih sebanyak 4 kali masa jabatan. Pada tahun 1995, Reno didiagnosis menderita Penyakit Parkinson.
Janet Wood Reno (July 21, 1938 – November 7, 2016) served as the Attorney General of the United States from 1993 until 2001. She was nominated by President Bill Clinton on February 11, 1993, and confirmed on March 11, 1993. She was the first woman to serve as Attorney General and the second-longest serving Attorney General in U.S. history, after William Wirt. Reno was born in Miami, Florida. Reno's mother, Jane Wallace (née Wood), raised her children and then became an investigative reporter for the Miami News. Her father, Henry Olaf Reno (né Rasmussen), was an emigrant from Denmark and a reporter for the Miami Herald for 43 years. Janet Reno had three younger siblings: Mark; writer Robert (1939–2012); and Maggy Hurchalla.
Reno attended public school in Miami-Dade County, Florida, where she was a debating champion, and was valedictorian at Coral Gables High School. In 1956 she enrolled at Cornell University, where she majored in chemistry, became president of the Women's Self-Government Association, and earned her room and board. After graduating from Cornell University, Reno enrolled at Harvard Law School, graduating in 1963. From 1963 to 1971 Reno worked as an attorney for two Miami law firms. In 1971, she joined the staff of the Judiciary Committee of the Florida House of Representatives.[4] In 1973, she worked on a project to revise the state's system of rules and regulations for criminal procedures.[4] Later in the same year, she accepted a position with the Dade County State Attorney's Office. She worked for the Judiciary Circuit, and left the state attorney's office in 1976 to become a partner in a private law firm.
In 1978 Reno was appointed State Attorney for Dade County (now called Miami-Dade County). She was elected to the Office of State Attorney in November 1978 and was returned to office by the voters four more times. She worked actively in various civic organizations, including the Miami Coalition for a Safe and Drug Free Community and the Beacon Council, which was formed to address Miami-Dade's economic development. During Reno's tenure as state attorney, she began what the PBS series Frontline described as a "crusade" against accused child abusers. An editorial in the St. Petersburg Times argued: "Reno's reputation as a state attorney, the foundation for her eight years as the nation's attorney general and her [2002] candidacy for governor of Florida, was built in significant part by her aggressive prosecution of three sensational child abuse cases in Miami-Dade County. She pioneered a controversial technique for eliciting intimate details from young children and inspired passage of a law allowing them to testify by closed-circuit television, out of the possibly intimidating presence of their suspected molesters."
Several of those prosecuted by Reno were either acquitted or later released by appellate judges. One defendant, "a 14-year-old boy, was acquitted after his attorneys discredited the children's persistent interrogations by a psychologist who called herself the 'yucky secrets doctor.' Another was freed by a federal appeals court after 12 years in prison." In May 1980, Reno prosecuted five white policemen who were accused of beating a black insurance salesman to death.[8] The policemen were all acquitted. During the resulting 1980 Miami riots, eighteen people were killed, with looters in Liberty City angrily chanting "Reno! Reno! Reno!" Reno met with nearly all of her critics, and a few months later, she won reelection in a landslide.
