The Western San Bernardino County Bar Association honored the head judges of both the county court and the county’s appellate court at their Annual Judicial Officer Awards Ceremony March 2.
San Bernardino Presiding Judge Glenn Yabuno was awarded the Judicial Officer of the Year award, and the Judicial Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Presiding Judge Manuel Ramirez of the Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division Two.
The bar also awarded the Mitchell Roth Service Award to Sheriff’s Deputy Amy Kennedy, who is assigned to bailiff’s duty.
Two-hundred and seventy-two people attended the dinner at the DoubleTree Hilton by the Ontario Airport, including 42 judges, District Attorney Jason Anderson and San Bernardino Mayor Helen Tran. The dinner brought in $30,000 in sponsorship.
Manuel Ramirez: Judicial Lifetime Achievement
Ramirez earned his law degree from Loyola University School of Law, and previously attended Whittier College and East Los Angeles Junior College. He graduated from the junior college in three semesters while working full time during the day and taking evening classes. He cooks once a month with his family at Santa Ana’s Southwest Community Center for the homeless, and co-founded the home for abused children Casita de San Jose. He co-founded the Efren Herrera Miller Lite Hispanic Scholarship Program, which has awarded more than $1.5 million in scholarships. He also created the Court of Appeal’s first outreach program at high schools throughout the Inland Empire. The program presents live oral argument in front of high school students.
Ramirez grew up in Rosemead, and often would go to bed hungry, said San Bernardino Superior Judge John Pacheco in his introduction remarks.
Ramirez joined the Orange County District Attorney’s Office in 1976, Pacheco said. He received national attention when he took on a paternity case involving Frank Sinatra Jr.
Gov. George Deukmejian appointed him as a judge to Orange County Municipal Court in 1983. He presided over the case People v. Bobby, in which a 13-year-old girl turned over her parents’ $3,000 bag of cocaine to the police. That case also brought him national attention, and he was elevated to Orange County Superior Court in 1986.
He presided over a major case involving Alberto Valdez, a deaf man who had been considered mentally incompetent due to California law, and had been bounced around mental institutions for 30 years.
Ramirez ordered an intelligence test that showed Valdez was actually above average intelligence. The result freed Valdez from the institutions and allowed him to live on his own, Pacheco said.
“People that were deaf did not receive any attention. Everything was just swept under the rug. ‘Let’s not talk about this person. They’re retarded. Let’s let them stay at the mental institutions.’ It was the courage and the willpower of Justice Ramirez to make sure that didn’t happen,” Pacheco said. He was elevated again to presiding justice of the Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division Two, in 1990, and has stayed there since.
In his acceptance speech, Ramirez stressed the importance of the law.
“I love talking about lawyers. Never in my life have I told a lawyer joke. I find them offensive,” Ramirez said.
Speaking to his childhood, Ramirez said his mother never let the family’s poverty, due to his father’s injuries during World War II and the family’s eight children, hurt her. He realized when he attended college that she had actually adopted an attitude similar to the Greek politician and general Pericles.
“To those families, the wives, there is no shame to admitting to poverty. Shame only comes when submitting to poverty,” Ramirez recited from Pericles’ funeral speech following the end of the Peloponnesian War.
Ramirez urged attorneys to be kind, compassionate and full of integrity.
“If a judge does not preserve his integrity, he is worthless. If he does, he is priceless,” Ramirez said.
Glenn Yabuno: Judicial Officer of the Year
Yabuno earned his law degree from Santa Clara University School of Law, and joined the bar in 1983. He immediately joined the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s Office, and handled preliminary hearings and trials for both misdemeanors and felonies until he joined private practice in 1988. He started practicing civil and family law trials with Wilson, Borror, Dunn and Scott in San Bernardino. He returned to the DA’s Office in 1991 to lead the environmental and consumer fraud unit, and stayed there for 19 years. He was appointed judge in 2010, and was elected presiding judge in 2021, after serving as assistant presiding judge and supervising judge.
Assistant Presiding Judge Lisa Rogan introduced Yabuno. She said Yabuno’s courage, followed by his patience, was his biggest strength. He allows his followers in the court to feel safe, and transitioned San Bernardino Superior Court well into a better, more technologically adapted version of itself, she said. During his leadership, the Needles courthouse reopened, the court adopted a new case management system and courthouses are getting a complete technological overhaul, Rogan said.
“Any one of these accomplishments would be considered a success for any other presiding judge, but he has done it all in just the past year,” Rogan said.
Yabuno said that his team members, especially Rogan, were the cause of the court’s success and expansions. He said Rogan’s handling of criminal jury trials during and after the COVID-19 pandemic prevented the county from dismissing a single case.
“We have the best working relationship, in my opinion, in the state,” he said, referring to the collaboration among the bench, the bar, law enforcement and the District Attorney’s Office.
“When I came here in 1984, my goal was to be here for about two to three years, go back to Fresno, and live the rest of my life there. But it didn’t take very long before I fell in love with this community. And it’s due to all of you folks that make this such a great place. You all are very welcoming to the new kid from the Central Valley who had never been past Bakersfield. I had heard several things about San Bernardino, but none of them were true. You guys all made it a great place,” he said.
Yabuno rattled off a list of names of high-quality attorneys he worked with, including Joe Campbell, Marcus Kauffman, Phil Cassidy, Dave Whitney, Tino Garza, Jim Dunn, Rich Scott and Ed Foley. He said they stood for the principles that now are preserved by the Attorney’s Oath.
“Now that they’re gone, the torch is passed to all of you, to carry on that civility route. To maintain and make sure that dignity, courage and integrity are integral parts of how we deal with life and how we deal with the judicial system,” Yabuno said.
Amy Kennedy: Mitchell Roth Service Award
Kennedy joined the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department in 1997, and began volunteering with the Debbie Chisholm Memorial Foundation in 2007. The foundation grants wishes to children facing cancer. In 2019, she began volunteering with the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Rodeo as the youth outreach director. She started two youth programs: the Golden Circle of Champions and Saddle Up. The Golden Circle gives children with cancer a paid trip to the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. Saddle Up teaches at-risk youth how to ride horses in an all-expenses paid horse camp.
“She is concerned more with others’ wishes than her own,” said Lt. Cmdr. Mike Landavazo of the East Valley Sheriff’s Court Services Division. “To see the amount of joy that she brings to the family (she visits), it’s just incredible.”
“Amy doesn’t make a difference, she creates a difference,” said Assistant Sheriff Samuel Fisk.
“Serving is the greatest pleasure,” Kennedy said in her acceptance remarks. “Thank you for allowing me to use my passion for livestock, for rodeo, for horses, and my other passions and talents to serve the youth in our county, the youth who need us most. Thank you for utilizing me for the ultimate purpose to help kids and families whose lives are in a whirlwind of chaos, tragedy and hardships. And, most of all, thank you for your dedication to our rodeo.”
