San Bernardino Supervising Deputy District Attorney Michelle Lauron is running for the only open judicial seat in the county—and sat down with Follow Our Courts to discuss her candidacy and career.
Her opponent, Dieter Dammeier, declined to take part in the candidate forum.
Lauron joined the San Bernardino District Attorney’s Office after she passed the bar in 1994.
“I’ve spent basically my entire career fighting crime and helping make this community safer,” Lauron said.
She was inspired to go into law after participating in the Apple Valley High School mock trial team, she said. If it wasn’t for that program, she said, she probably would have followed her parents into medicine—her father was a doctor. She’s since given back to mock trial by coaching the Los Osos High School team, in Rancho Cucamonga. She’s coached other students who have also chosen to go into law through the program—and who also joined the San Bernardino District Attorney’s Office, she said.
She said her history as a prosecutor has trained her to be discerning and impartial.
“My job the last 28-plus years has been to do the right thing, and to evaluate until we file them that we can prove within a reasonable doubt,” she said.
“A judge has got to learn how to be fair, they have to be impartial, and they have to be able to look at everything. Whether you have personal feelings about the issues or about the law, you’ve got to put those things aside. I’ve had to do that over the years,” she said.
She said her experience has allowed her to realize that anyone, even gang members or addicts, have to be treated fairly, without bias.
As a prosecutor, Lauron brought murder, rape, child sexual assault, domestic violence, drug trafficking and welfare fraud charges.
Lauron was promoted to supervisor in the District Attorney’s Office 10 years ago, and now supervises a team of 12 attorneys and law clerks in the misdemeanor team.
If she wins the election, she intends to bring empathy to her courtroom.
“I think it’s really important for litigants to know that the judge is listening. The judge has empathy, they may not agree with you, but they listened. I think that that’s an important part, for people to feel that they’ve been heard,” Lauron said.
Judges also need to be humble, she said, referencing a claim by California Supreme Justice Martin Jenkins.
“To be humble in knowing that I have to work just as hard as everybody else, being humbled to know that I need to be as fair and impartial as I possibly can be, to be humble and knowing that everybody’s opinion, and their arguments, need to be heard,” Lauron said.
The biggest obstacle to justice is the lack of court funding in the county, she said, citing the state’s determination nine years ago that San Bernardino Superior Court only had half the judges the court needs to manage the amount of cases filed. Since then, the court has hired more judges, but still needed 30 more judges as of 2020.
“We don’t have enough judges, and we don’t have enough courtrooms, and the funding has yet to materialize,” Lauron said.
The Victorville courthouse she worked at in 1992 and 1993 as a law clerk has only opened two more courthouses in the last 30 years—and other courthouses in Barstow and Redlands have closed, she said.
When those courtrooms close down, litigants have to drive farther, and have to pay their lawyers more for travel time.
“When we close courtrooms that are farther away, let’s say in Needles, or Barstow, or Redlands, or Chino, those different courthouses all around the county, and you’re consolidating (criminal cases and civil cases in different courthouses) we are denying access to litigants,” Lauron said.
To meet those challenges, the court must continue using out of the box solutions, she said.
Sometimes those solutions, that have already been adopted, are court management policies that bring early settlements, or using remote technology to allow litigants to appear remotely.
“Some measure of justice is better than no justice at all,” Lauron said.
Beyond her work in law and mock trial, Lauron volunteers with her church by running marriage ministries with her husband. As part of that program, she runs retreats for married couples. She also volunteers with junior high youth groups, and participates in cancer awareness and Alzheimer’s awareness walks.
