New Bay Area judge is veteran public defender

Jessica Delgado is praised on both sides of the courtroom and bolsters diversity of the bench with her Latina heritage and LGBTQ identity

As a seasoned public defender in the Bay Area, Jessica Delgado says her north star is an iconic quote from Sister Helen Prejean, the legendary Catholic nun who has sought to infuse compassion into the American criminal-justice system in her lifelong crusade against the death penalty.

“People are more than the worst thing they have ever done in their lives,” the quote reads.

For Delgado, who has spent her career representing people charged with serious crimes, the sentiment continues to guide her, as she takes on a new role as Santa Clara County’s newest judge.

“Remembering that a person has the capacity to be better,” Delgado said, “At root that is probably the strongest thing I bring to the bench community.”

She officially joined the Superior Court bench this past week, after she was appointed at the end of last month by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Delgado, 52, has spent the past two decades as an attorney in the county’s public defender’s office and alternate defender’s office.

She is an alum of the UC Berkeley School of Law, UC Santa Cruz, and Cabrillo College, and resides in Santa Cruz County with her family; her new position pays an annual salary of $214,601, according to the governor’s office.

Delgado, who was named Attorney of the Year by the public defender’s office in 2014, has handled some of the county’s most complex criminal cases, including a capital case in 2019 involving a child’s killing that ended with prosecutors dropping their pursuit of the death penalty and a negotiated plea for voluntary manslaughter.

Part of Delgado’s pursuit of a judgeship was about finding a new path to stay in a public-service role, she said, which dates back to her college days working as an advocate for battered women and children and women survivors of sexual assault, and increasing Latino cultural competency in those service realms.

“My identity of being a public servant is stronger to me,” Delgado said. “Being part of judicial branch is simply an extension of that public service.”

Recently, she used vacation time to travel to Texas — where she grew up after being born in Los Angeles — and assist immigrants in ICE detention with their asylum claims. When the COVID-19 pandemic first took hold a year ago, she sewed masks to give away.

“She is such a brilliant lawyer who brings so much diversity to the bench as a member of the LGBTQ community and as a bilingual Latina,” said Molly O’Neal, who is the county’s first LGBTQ chief public defender and a long

time colleague of Delgado. “Her legal talent is unparalleled. She has had so much success giving voice to marginalized clients, weaving their life stories into the law in a way that juries, DA’s and judges have responded to favorably.”

Across the courtroom, she is held in similarly high regard. Assistant District Attorney David Angel said that was cemented in his work with Delgado to reach agreements to release large groups of people from county jails to decrease the COVID-19 risks in those facilities.

“She was a tenacious, fierce advocate for her clients, and conveyed how dire the situation was in the jails,” Angel said. “What elevated her in my mind was her ability to look at the big picture, and despite her advocacy she was always collaborative and congenial. She will be extremely focused on fairness.”

Delgado says her appointment holds special meaning because it was Newsom as San Francisco’s mayor in 2004 who legalized gay marriage in the city, allowing Delgado, who identifies as a lesbian, to marry her partner at a time when the government’s recognition of her burgeoning family was anything but assured.

That doubt included her experience of being refused prenatal care from a doctor because she was not a heterosexual married woman.

“(Newsom’s) act was a sea change in establishing dignity for my family,” Delgado said. “So for me, this governor choosing me is a very powerful thing.”

She enters her judgeship also mindful of the significance of her background, both personally and professionally.

She cites how despite Latinos accounting for about 40% of California’s population, their representation in the state’s roster of lawyers is barely a tenth of that.

“Representation and visibility are really important to young people, and I have every intention of being as visible in the community as I can be,” she said.

That focus on being a role model extends to her other identities, and she cited how “the staggering numbers of LGBTQ youth of color in Santa Clara County who are at risk of suicide is a big motivator for me.”

“Whatever I can do to create more of a feeling of accessibility,” she said. “Feeling safe and seen and heard in a courtroom I’m presiding over is so fundamental to me.”

Those priorities are an extension of values she has long espoused, which she sees factoring directly into her new role.

“All of these issues we’re talking about, we’re more alike than we are different,” Delgado said. “The challenge is finding that in the middle of a controversy, and I’m up for that.”