SAN JOSE — The three newest additions to the Santa Clara County Superior Courtroom bench all come from steeped public service backgrounds and powerful native roots.
Micael Estremera, Kelley Paul and Rebeca Esquivel-Pedroza had been named the South Bay’s latest judges by Gov. Gavin Newsom this month. All three are Santa Clara College alumni. Estremera and Paul are longtime deputy public defenders within the county; Esquivel-Pedroza’s previous contains working as a legal-aid lawyer and serving to lead the Superior Courtroom’s self-help heart earlier than she grew to become a court docket commissioner.
Micael Estremera
Micael Estremera, 42, grew up in East San Jose, attended Bellarmine Faculty Prep and earned his bachelor’s and regulation levels as a Bronco. He credit his public service drive partly to his father Tony, an lawyer and former director of the Authorized Assist Society of Santa Clara County, in addition to a longtime board member of the Santa Clara Valley Water District, and his mom, a nurse who served on the San Jose-Evergreen Neighborhood Faculty District board.
“My household is deeply dedicated to group service,” Estremera mentioned. “It’s what I’ve completed for many of my profession as a public defender.”
He sees a pure utility of these experiences to his upcoming position.
“I've been in courtrooms my total profession, and served my group from the courtroom for many of my profession. That’s afforded me a breadth of perspective that I hope is effective,” Estremera mentioned.
He added, “I’ve witnessed through the years how impactful the courts are, and I see this as a possibility to serve a broader sector and a broader swath of the group. I’m humbled and honored by the appointment; it's a great accountability.”
Along with his work within the public defender’s workplace, Estremera was briefly an lawyer with the county counsel’s workplace and, after regulation faculty, labored on the former San Francisco-based agency Thelen LLP. He lives in San Jose, the place he's married with two kids.
Kelley Paul
Paul, 49, was born and raised in Sunnyvale, and is an alumna of Homestead Excessive Faculty, San Jose State College and the Santa Clara College Faculty of Legislation. She says her sense of service was instilled by her mother and father, each educators, a area wherein her sister additionally works.
She highlighted the worth of a court docket that “contains range of expertise,” and mentioned she hopes so as to add to that within the county.
“I’m a single mother of three ladies, I’ve grown up on this group,” Paul mentioned. “I’m in a position to know the problems higher, I’m in a position to relate higher due to these experiences.”
She additionally touts having spent her total profession in a courtroom setting, which she mentioned gave her “the chance practically day-after-day to see the impression that judges could make within the lives of residents of my group.”
Paul was a part of a number of native landmark circumstances. In 2014, she proved that a defendant in a Monte Sereno homicide case was wrongfully implicated, after a paramedic treating her shopper inadvertently transferred his DNA to the crime scene hours later and miles away.
In 2020, Paul was one in every of two lead attorneys who secured the acquittal of a person in a death-penalty case involving the demise and sexual abuse of a 2-year-old youngster, after convincing jurors that the DNA proof and evaluation that implicated him was inadequate and inconclusive. The decision was adopted quickly after by the district lawyer’s workplace’s pledge to cease charging the demise penalty.
Paul, a Mountain View resident who till just lately had used the final title Kulick, mentioned her resolution to use for a judgeship got here from a mirrored image on her profession up to now.
“I used to be in search of a brand new problem that additionally serves my group,” she mentioned. “As a neighborhood child out of San Jose State, I’m undecided I envisioned this was a chance. Coming from two schoolteachers to this, is a giant deal. I look ahead to the chance.”
Rebeca Esquivel-Pedroza
Esquivel-Pedroza, 49, hails from East San Jose, having graduated from Independence Excessive Faculty. She graduated from Santa Clara College with a bachelor’s diploma and earned a regulation diploma from the California Western Faculty of Legislation in San Diego.
She mentioned she goals to attach immigrant communities — her household moved to the US from El Salvador — to the courts.
“That is my residence, that is the place I grew up, and the place I felt I had the group ties,” she mentioned. “With the challenges I noticed rising up, I’m focused on demystifying the regulation and making it extra accessible. I actually wish to assist individuals have entry to the courts and the justice system, to have a significant expertise and stroll away understanding what occurred.”
After regulation faculty, she was an lawyer on the San Diego Volunteer Lawyer Program. She later served as an lawyer with Bay Space Authorized Assist from 2008 to 2011.
She then began her work for Santa Clara County, first as an lawyer for the county court docket’s self-help heart and household regulation facilitator’s workplace, rising to steer lawyer of that division in 2019. A yr later, she was appointed as a court docket commissioner, a place approved to hold out restricted judicial duties.
Most of her work for the county, Esquivel-Pedroza mentioned, suited her as a result of on the self-help heart “there have been no limitations on who I served. It was like a impartial place. I might serve all events who want help.”
She additionally realized how beneficial her bilingual abilities had been for lots of the purchasers she served, which she mentioned strengthened the significance of being “delicate to others with totally different languages, as a result of accessing courts could be difficult with these language boundaries.”
“The authorized system could be very advanced,” she mentioned, “however I believe we could be conscious to make it straightforward for everybody to entry it in a good manner.”
Esquivel-Pedroza is married with kids and lives in San Jose.