A growing, and welcome, trend: Women prosecutors in California’s courts

Once made equal to man, Woman becomes his superior. Socrates, c. 420 B.C.

Since America’s women won the right to vote a century ago, they have had to fight a continuing battle for equality in employment. In one area, however, women now rule the workplace: California prosecutors’ offices.

Public prosecution was once a male domain. When I was first a county prosecutor 50 years ago, California had not one female district attorney. Today, women hold 29, or 56%, of the state’s 58 elected district attorney positions.

Nancy O’Malley, district attorney of Alameda County, heads the California District Attorneys Association. Prosecution is in O’Malley’s blood. Her father was district attorney of Contra Costa County and president of the same association, a brother was a deputy district attorney, a niece is a deputy in her office, and she has a nephew wannabe prosecutor in law school.

When O’Malley hired on as a deputy in 1984, one quarter of Alameda County prosecutors were women. O’Malley has hired more female deputies than male, and now women hold half the positions. “One of the best things about being a prosecutor today,” she said, “is equal opportunity — if you work hard and hone your trial skills, women can move up the same way as men. Some of our strongest trial lawyers are women.”

In the San Joaquin Valley, female district attorneys now head offices in six of its eight counties: Fresno, Madera, Merced, Kern, Stanislaus, and San Joaquin.

Lisa Smittcamp has been Fresno County’s district attorney since 2015. Her female deputies outnumber males, 50 to 49. Smittcamp’s chief deputy, Jerry Stanley, has witnessed a gradual gender equalization over his years in the office. Today’s female deputies, he said, are “some of the best and brightest in the office,” and are “all doing a wonderful job.” Asked if female deputies are given important cases, Stanley said that women outnumber men on the sexual assault and domestic violence teams, and fill three of the seven positions on the homicide team.

Unlike many of her male counterparts in large prosecutor’s offices, Smittcamp can be seen in the courtroom. She appears regularly in Veterans’ Court, and last year she won multiple guilty verdicts, including attempted murder and assault with great bodily injury, in the jury trial of Bernardo Madueno Jr.

In Madera, Sally Moreno won a hotly contested election to become that county’s first female district attorney. Since taking office last year, Moreno has turned a troubled office around and regained the respect of law enforcement and the community. And, like Smittcamp, Moreno can be seen in the courtroom. She recently re-tried the decades-old case of murderer Richard Phillips, won a jury verdict, and returned Phillips to prison for life without parole.

Female dominance is not limited to California’s elected district attorneys, but also prevails among their staffs. In 2015, a Stanford Criminal Justice Center survey found that 48 percent of the state’s nearly 4,000 prosecutors were women, and the percentage is surely greater today.

Although reliable statistics are unavailable, female attorneys also likely predominate in California’s public defender offices. According to Fresno County’s public defender, Elizabeth Diaz, her female and male deputies are divided “about half and half” in her office. When she began defending 29 years ago, there were far more men than women, Diaz said, and she is “glad times have changed.”

California Public Defenders Association president Oscar Bobrow, of Solano County, agrees. The statewide percentage of female deputy defenders “has changed dramatically” in his 35 years of defending, he said, and their statewide number is now “equal to or greater” than the men’s. Bobrow added that the next three presidents of his association are slated to be women.

The incubators of attorneys are the nation’s law schools, and the gatekeepers are the state bar associations. The predominance of women in California’s district attorney and public defender offices accurately reflects gender statistics for law school graduates and state bar admittees. In 2017, one survey found that 51.3% of the nation’s law school graduates, and 56% of California’s, were women. When I was a student at Stanford Law School many years ago, there were three women in our class of 152 — 2%. Stanford’s current first-year class is 53% female. At University of California Berkeley’s School of Law, 60% of the first-year class are women, and at Fresno’s San Joaquin College of Law, the first-year class is 57% female.

The State Bar of California is the gatekeeper for attorneys, admitting to practice only those who pass a rigorous examination that is given twice yearly. In last July’s exam, 55.6% of those taking it were female.

The gender ratio among attorneys in California’s private law firms, however, and among California’s judges, is still lopsided, with males clearly dominating. But that is a story for another day, and it too will surely change. The ascendance of women in California’s trial courtrooms is not a temporary anomaly in a society still dominated by men, but a proven trend that will only increase with time.

Apparently Socrates had it right.

This story was originally published February 14, 2020 at 12:00 AM.