SAN JOSE — The three latest additions to the Santa Clara County Superior Court bench all come from steeped public service backgrounds and strong local roots.
Micael Estremera, Kelley Paul and Rebeca Esquivel-Pedroza were named the South Bay’s newest judges by Gov. Gavin Newsom this month. All three are Santa Clara University alumni. Estremera and Paul are longtime deputy public defenders in the county; Esquivel-Pedroza’s past includes working as a legal-aid attorney and helping lead the Superior Court’s self-help center before she became a court commissioner.
Micael Estremera
Micael Estremera, 42, grew up in East San Jose, attended Bellarmine College Prep and earned his bachelor’s and law degrees as a Bronco. He credits his public service drive in part to his father Tony, an attorney and former director of the Legal Aid Society of Santa Clara County, as well as a longtime board member of the Santa Clara Valley Water District, and his mother, a nurse who served on the San Jose-Evergreen Community College District board.
“My family is deeply committed to community service,” Estremera said. “It’s what I’ve done for most of my career as a public defender.”
He sees a natural application of those experiences to his upcoming role.
“I have been in courtrooms my entire career, and served my community from the courtroom for most of my career. That’s afforded me a breadth of perspective that I hope is valuable,” Estremera said.
He added, “I’ve witnessed over the years how impactful the courts are, and I see this as an opportunity to serve a broader sector and a broader swath of the community. I’m humbled and honored by the appointment; it is a tremendous responsibility.”
In addition to his work in the public defender’s office, Estremera was briefly an attorney with the county counsel’s office and, after law school, worked at the former San Francisco-based firm Thelen LLP. He lives in San Jose, where he is married with two children.
Kelley Paul
Paul, 49, was born and raised in Sunnyvale, and is an alumna of Homestead High School, San Jose State University and the Santa Clara University School of Law. She says her sense of service was instilled by her parents, both educators, a field in which her sister also works.
She highlighted the value of a court that “includes diversity of experience,” and said she hopes to add to that in the county.
“I’m a single mom of three girls, I’ve grown up in this community,” Paul said. “I’m able to know the issues better, I’m able to relate better because of those experiences.”
She also touts having spent her entire career in a courtroom environment, which she said gave her “the opportunity nearly every day to see the impact that judges can make in the lives of citizens of my community.”
Paul was part of several local landmark cases. In 2014, she proved that a defendant in a Monte Sereno murder case was wrongfully implicated, after a paramedic treating her client inadvertently transferred his DNA to the crime scene hours later and miles away.
In 2020, Paul was one of two lead attorneys who secured the acquittal of a man in a death-penalty case involving the death and sexual abuse of a 2-year-old child, after convincing jurors that the DNA evidence and analysis that implicated him was insufficient and inconclusive. The verdict was followed soon after by the district attorney’s office’s pledge to stop charging the death penalty.
Paul, a Mountain View resident who until recently had used the last name Kulick, said her decision to apply for a judgeship came from a reflection on her career to date.
“I was looking for a new challenge that also serves my community,” she said. “As a local kid out of San Jose State, I’m not sure I envisioned this was a possibility. Coming from two schoolteachers to this, is a big deal. I look forward to the opportunity.”
Rebeca Esquivel-Pedroza
Esquivel-Pedroza, 49, hails from East San Jose, having graduated from Independence High School. She graduated from Santa Clara University with a bachelor’s degree and earned a law degree from the California Western School of Law in San Diego.
She said she aims to connect immigrant communities — her family moved to the United States from El Salvador — to the courts.
“This is my home, this is where I grew up, and where I felt I had the community ties,” she said. “With the challenges I saw growing up, I’m interested in demystifying the law and making it more accessible. I really want to help people have access to the courts and the justice system, to have a meaningful experience and walk away understanding what happened.”
After law school, she was an attorney at the San Diego Volunteer Lawyer Program. She later served as an attorney with Bay Area Legal Aid from 2008 to 2011.
She then started her work for Santa Clara County, first as an attorney for the county court’s self-help center and family law facilitator’s office, rising to lead attorney of that division in 2019. A year later, she was appointed as a court commissioner, a position authorized to carry out limited judicial duties.
Most of her work for the county, Esquivel-Pedroza said, suited her because at the self-help center “there were no limitations on who I served. It was like a neutral position. I could serve all parties who need assistance.”
She also realized how valuable her bilingual skills were for many of the clients she served, which she said reinforced the importance of being “sensitive to others with different languages, because accessing courts can be challenging with those language barriers.”
“The legal system can be very complex,” she said, “but I think we can be mindful to make it easy for everyone to access it in a fair way.”
Esquivel-Pedroza is married with children and lives in San Jose.
Source: www.mercurynews.com