The Bar Association of San Francisco (BASF) hosted “Her Honor” Judge LaDoris Cordell on Nov. 30 in the final installment of BASF Board President Marvin Anderson’s four-part racial justice initiative. In case you missed the earlier discussions, part one dove into police reform in America, followed by a conversation in which Rachel Cargle unpacked the longstanding history of white supremacy, and part three reflected on the relationship between race and voting through the years with New Georgia Project’s Nsé Ufot. 

BASF invited viewers to a discussion with retired Judge Cordell (watch the full discussion here) on the key components of the justice system: the courts and the judicial system through the lens of race. BASF’s Executive Director and General Counsel Yolanda Jackson spoke candidly to Cordell, a trailblazer in the Bay Area legal community, about her book Her Honor. Guided by the principle of always doing right led to Cordell’s brilliant insights of how our system is broken and her bold proposed solutions to fix it. From being the Assistant Dean and Vice Provost at Stanford Law School, to opening her own firm in East Palo Alto, to being both a Municipal and Superior Court Judge, and becoming successfully elected by the public to the bench, Cordell has a wide range of experience in the field and the extensive knowledge to show for it. 

Despite being the main pool from which judges are picked, many law students make their way through school unaware of the role a judge plays. After discovering that no law schools held clinics on how to be a judge, Cordell pioneered the first program in the nation in Santa Clara County. “It just struck me that, first of all, there's very little training to do the specific work required of trial judges… There's nothing in our law schools to get people to even think about this whole profession,” said Cordell. She established a clinical program in judging where law students sat first chair, alongside her as second chair, where they were able to preside over small claims cases. “The idea was to say this is such an important profession, we need to start that preparation and get people thinking about how important it is to sit and preside over cases that involve issues that are important in people's lives,” she said.

In my view, every kid, every juvenile who gets life without the possibility of parole, we are saying to that young person you are worthless. You can never be redeemed. And therefore, the rest of your entire life, you’ll never be back in society.” — Cordell

The focus then shifted to juveniles, a matter Cordell feels very strongly about. “It was a recognition that juveniles are not adults. Their minds are not fully formed, and for that reason, we should not treat them as adults,” she explained. Despite this realization, there has been a consistent trend to try juveniles as adults. “I really believe in redemption. I believe in it for just about everybody, but especially for our young people. It’s important that we have a system that doesn’t give up on them,” said Cordell. Oftentimes prosecutors argue this process would be too time-consuming. “Justice takes time,” Cordell countered, “everybody will say the system will get backed up. Well then we need to look at the root causes that instead enable a system to get so backed up.” She proposed the U.S. Supreme Court should revisit their decision, and recommended that juveniles should always have the right to a jury trial.

Cordell also firmly believes in abolishing life without the possibility of parole for all juvenile offenders. It is known that when judges have the discretion to impose life without parole for juveniles, the sentences are disproportionately given to young people of color, resulting in a vicious cycle. “In my view, every kid, every juvenile who gets life without the possibility of parole, we are saying to that young person you are worthless. You can never be redeemed. And therefore, the rest of your entire life, you’ll never be back in society.” Through her experience, she also found that there was a great disparity in providing remedies and opportunities to rehabilitate young women. “I was trying to push the system to be fair to young girls,” she said. Cordell’s hope is that the U.S. The Supreme Court will put an end to this discretion, and realize that every juvenile is redeemable.  

In an alarming statistic, Jackson pointed out that 97% of our criminal trials never see the courtroom. A few reasons for this involve court case backlog and the expense to the court and prosecutors trying these cases. She also discusses the prosecutors' practices of adding on charges in order to intimidate defendants into a plea bargain. “Horse trading between prosecutors and defense counsel determines who goes to jail, and for how long. That is what plea bargaining is, it is not some adjunct to the criminal justice system. It is the criminal justice system,” said Cordell. It is estimated that more than 20,000 innocent people took Alford pleas as a result of coercion and to avoid risk of facing trial. Cordell expressed her concern about the violation of the sixth amendment’s guarantee of the right to a fair jury trial. Her proposed fix is to put an end to coercive plea bargaining and that the court reexamine Alford pleas. 

You cannot have people trust the system, unless the system is held accountable. The legal system is held accountable only by letting the public, the people who use the system, know how it functions and how it works."
— Cordell

Peremptory challenges, which allow lawyers to dismiss a certain number of potential jurors without giving a reason why, are another complex aspect of the legal system. If a dismissal of a potential juror appears to be based on race, then the lawyer must offer a race-neutral reason to explain their dismissal. The most recent example of this is seen in the case involving the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, in which the judge found that there was intentional racial discrimination used by the defense attorneys in kicking off black jurors. Cordell’s solution here is to enact a focused legislation to uncover racial bias in peremptory challenges, as she points out there are seminars that teach lawyers how to create race-neutral explanations. “It is quite clear that racial bias is really the major reason that peremptory challenges are utilized especially in the criminal system,” she said. Although she agreed that peremptories are the “greatest embarrassment” of the legal system, she considered them an important tool if they are used properly and not racially motivated. 

When judges misbehave and engage in misconduct, it is crucial that members of the public become aware and that judges are disciplined. “You cannot have people trust the system unless the system is held accountable. The legal system is held accountable only by letting the public, the people who use the system, know how it functions and how it works.” Despite believing most judges are well-intentioned, bias is still present among judges, and in many cases, they are not well informed about the struggles and realities that people of color face. This feeds into the importance of why more diversity on the bench is necessary. Although few judges are actually disciplined, Cordell hopes that this will change the more transparent the system becomes. 

The selection of judges is also inherently flawed, in that it is a highly political process that focuses on economic gains. “Judges are not politicians and do not make promises about how they are going to rule in cases. The only thing judges promise is to uphold the law.” Cordell instead recommended that we replace judicial elections with independent nomination commissions. “I would like to bring merit back to judicial selection. And I would like to bring representational diversity back to the selection of judges and in my view, the way to do it is to take the money out, and instead go to nominating commissions,” she said.

Juries give us a good opportunity to educate people about the legal system. So I think that we need to value them more and that is everything from jury selection, to compensation, to jury instructions." — Cordell

Her Honor also looks at the significance juries hold in the legal system and its history of being overlooked. During her time on the bench, very rarely did Cordell see a person of color on the jury. “There was such a lack of representational diversity on juries and it continues today,” she said. People of color can not afford to sit on a jury with meager pay. She recommended that the only resolution to this problem is that either companies or the state be required to pay their employees their salaries on jury duty. “Juries give us a good opportunity to educate people about the legal system. So I think that we need to value them more and that is everything from jury selection, to compensation, to jury instructions,” said Cordell. 

Cordell concluded by advocating for further education in racial biases for all legal professionals. She commended the San Francisco Bar Associations’ efforts to recognize and identify the issues in the legal system, and urged other bar associations to follow suit. 

Cordell left the audience with some final words of wisdom. She spoke about the letters she wrote during her last eight years on the bench: “I wrote about the cases that I heard, the names of the people, the decisions I made, and I also wrote about how I felt when I made a decision that made me feel good, or one that I didn’t want to make but had to. That’s the message to lawyers, to judges. Keep a journal, and even better write letters.” Her parting words to the audience were “activism is my rent for living on this planet. So I encourage you all to be activists, whether you're on the bench, off the bench, lawyer, non-lawyer. Be activists and pay your rent every single day.”