Biden continues diverse judicial picks with nominations to U.S. District Court in S.F.

President Biden announced his first two nominees, both women and senior lawyers, to the US District Court in San Francisco on Wednesday: Jacqueline Scott Corley, a judge on the court, and Trina Thompson, a Justice of the Alameda County Supreme Court.

The nominees continue Biden’s record of increasing legal diversity. If approved by the Senate, Thompson would join another Biden candidate as the only black woman among 61 judges in the California federal court. Another newly announced candidate, Ruth Bermudez Montenegro, would become the second Latina among these judges if confirmed by the US District Court in San Diego.

Biden and the Senate Judiciary Committee “have made significant strides in putting highly skilled judges on the Bundesbank and better reflecting the federal judiciary, the nation it serves,” said California Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla, both members of the committee a joint declaration praising the nominations.

Corley, who attended UC Berkeley and Harvard Law School, practiced as a lawyer from 1994 to 2011 when she was first appointed as a Magistrate Judge by the Northern District justices. Judges conduct pre-trial hearings and conciliation conferences, preside over criminal offense proceedings, and can negotiate a wide range of civil cases with the consent of both parties.

Thompson graduated from UC Berkeley and its law school, then practiced criminal law as a public defender and private attorney for 16 years before being elected to Superior Court in 2002.

In 2019, she led the trial of two men charged in the 2016 fire that broke out at a party at the Ghost Ship warehouse in the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland, killing 36 people. One defendant, Max Harris, was acquitted of negligent manslaughter, but the jury got stuck with co-defendant Derrick Almena, who ran the camp with Harris. Almena, who had been incarcerated for four years, pleaded guilty to 36 manslaughter charges in an agreement in January this year that allowed him to spend the last 1½ years of his sentence in house arrest.

Thompson was also named a member of the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention by President Barack Obama in 2011, which oversees federal programs for youth crime prevention, incarceration, and programs related to missing or abused children.

Also on Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held its first hearing on Biden’s appointment of Gabriel Sanchez, currently a judge on the First District Court of Appeal for the state in San Francisco, in the US Ninth District Court of Appeals.

Sanchez, a former farm labor attorney, worked for Governor Jerry Brown as a crime and prison advisor for seven years before Brown appointed him to the Court of Appeals in 2018. At Wednesday’s hearing, several Republican senators cursed him for his role in Proposition 57, the 2016 voter-approved measure approved by Brown in 2016 that entitle thousands of state prisoners to earlier probation hearings if their crimes were deemed non-violent.

Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Accused Sanchez of endangering Californians by enabling the release of felons, despite state reports showing no increase in violent crime. Sanchez pointed out that the U.S. Supreme Court has ordered California to reduce the number of inmates in prison and seems likely to get confirmation, said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond who is obeying court appointments and the hearing observed.

Bob Egelko is a contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @BobEgelko

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