Judge Ramona Garrett, Class of '80

Judge Ramona Garrett '80 served on the bench in Solano County for more than 23 years, originally on the Municipal and then on the Superior Court. She was the county’s first woman judge and first African American judge to sit on those courts. After beginning her career in private practice, she became a Deputy District Attorney in Contra Costa County in 1982. Two years later, she moved to Solano County as a Deputy District Attorney. Almost immediately, she was assigned a high-profile capital murder trial involving a Vietnam veteran who killed a Fairfield police officer. While litigating the case, and facing intense, statewide media coverage, she was promoted to Chief Deputy District Attorney.

After the Municipal and Superior courts consolidated, Judge Garrett helped create Solano County’s Drug Court program in 1996. She served as presiding judge of the Superior court from 2008 to 2009. In 2010, the California Women Lawyers awarded her the Rose Bird Memorial Award. She retired in 2015. The Solano County Bar Association honored her with the first Annual Legal Trailblazers Award in November 2022.

What inspired you to become a judge?

I began my profession in private practice with a small civil firm for two years. During that time, I tried two petty theft cases in front of juries as a defense lawyer. Thereafter, I became a prosecutor in Contra Costa County working as a trial attorney on contract for two years. I then became a trial lawyer, a prosecutor, in Solano County. I enjoyed trial work — working with judges, juries, defense counsel — tremendously.

Three weeks after I started work in Solano County, I was assigned a capital murder case to prosecute. The case involved a legless Vietnam veteran who shot and killed the first police officer ever killed in the line of duty in the city of Fairfield, California. By that time, I had been out of law school for about four years. The case lasted three and a half years and took two jury trials to successfully resolve.

During the trial period, I was promoted to Chief Deputy District Attorney in Solano County. When I began my duties as Chief Deputy, I was seldom in the courtroom. I was managing other attorneys and doing other managerial and administrative work.

Eventually, I yearned to be back in the courtroom, handling legal issues directly. I wanted to work with juries, trial attorneys, bailiffs, witnesses. I wanted to be responsible for managing what happened in the courtroom.

Upon my application, Governor Pete Wilson appointed me to the Northern Solano Municipal Court bench in 1992. I became a Superior Court judge when the courts consolidated in 1997.

How do you think your life experiences informed you as a judge?

I was the second child of six children born to two parents who had been born and raised in Jim Crow segregation, in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, during the Great Depression. The United States Air Force saved our family by transferring us to military bases outside of Pine Bluff. We lived in Tripoli, Libya; New Mexico; Okinawa; Little Rock Air Force Base; and other locations. Still, we were very poor and suffered from hunger a lot.

I was asked to leave my high school in Fairfield, California, in January of my senior year because I was pregnant and showing. I had enough credits to graduate early.

That fall, I began college at age 18, with a three-month-old baby. I was on welfare and food stamps for four years and graduated, on time, from Santa Clara University with a degree in philosophy. When I started law school at King Hall in 1977, I had only been off welfare for two years.

My life experiences informed and enriched my judgeship in several ways. I knew and understood how hard life could be for people. When people came into my courtroom for any purpose, and I had to make decisions that affected them, I was usually curious about their back-stories and tried to factor those into my decision-making.

My life experiences forced me to be an independent thinker. This trait caused me to review anew precedent in cases, court operations, anything where I had a seat at the table and could contribute my analysis.

No situation was ever too hard for me. My dad was in the Air Force, so we would live in one location two or three years and then move. I was able to parachute into new locations and new experiences and thrive. That was helpful when I was the first woman and first African American judge in the county.

What have you been doing since you retired?

I retired in 2015, but I was still a judge sitting on assignment until 2018. I wasn’t working full time. Starting in 2015, I was the caretaker for my husband, who was having serious health problems. I lost my late husband in January 2018. After that, I fully retired.

I am still recovering from the bench. I had engaged in judicial decision-making, non-stop, for more than twenty years. Some decisions were simple. So many others were very convoluted and complicated. It was very challenging, particularly the sentencing for horrific murder trials.

My brain was stretched and stretched beyond capacity. And then it was stretched some more. My mind is calming down now. It is healing.

I have been working on a memoir that I hope to publish about the murder case I prosecuted early in my career. I am trying to formally compose my library. I probably have a couple of thousand books, but they are scattered around my house, in my garage, in my off-site office, in a storage room. I want them to come together as a library.

I am reading a lot, from old college philosophy books to books about criminal justice reform. I am trying to read and understand poetry.

I share caretaking for my 92-year-old mother with my four siblings. I spend time with my friends.

I do whatever I feel like doing when I wake up in the morning.

Why did you choose to attend King Hall?

I graduated from Santa Clara University in 1974 with a philosophy degree. I was the first in my family to have attended college. I had no mentors. I did not know what to do with my life. I did not realize the value of having a bachelor’s degree. I was still on welfare.

I did know that I had a four-year-old daughter to support. Thus, I worked at various jobs: folding towels in a department store, washing bottles in an oil refinery, working as a counselor at Juvenile Hall, and more. Once I got a “good job” as a cable T.V. sales representative and a job as a cocktail waitress at a nightclub on weekends, I was able to get off welfare and barely support myself and my daughter.

During this period, I felt like I was dying psychologically due to intellectual dehydration. I had gone from four years of college, studying and grappling with metaphysics, ancient philosophy, medieval philosophy, St. Augustine, Sigmund Freud, Carlos Castaneda, the work of Martha Graham, Frantz Fanon and his The Wretched of the Earth . . .

And then, nothing. It was all gone.

I was rendered selling cable T.V. subscriptions to home occupants and placing address labels on hundreds of brochures during sales campaigns; reading the occasional fiction novel; reading fashion magazines; writing on cocktail napkins between taking drink orders and trying to stay awake at the 21 Club at night.

I didn’t know any better. I was miserable. I didn’t know that my intellect needed to be turbo-charged again.

Eventually, I met a lawyer through my job as a cable TV representative. He needed to sign up for our plan so he wouldn’t lose his cable service, and we talked about the law. Also, people came to me with their legal problems because I was the only one in my family who had gone to college. It kept happening.

The most serious case was from my mother’s mother who still lived in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where I had lived as a child. The city was threatening to condemn her house if she didn’t do a list of things that she could not do. They wanted to take her property. I knew a nearby university was buying up property in the area, so it was valuable. They came to me for help with the problem. I couldn’t solve it. I needed to go to law school.

I took the LSAT and did extremely well. I applied to law schools at UC Davis and Santa Clara University, and was accepted at both. When I came to visit King Hall, I met Admissions Director Sharon Pinkney. I loved the atmosphere. It was calm and welcoming. My daughter was seven, and I knew I would need help with her. My family was in Fairfield, which is closer to Davis than Santa Clara.

I chose King Hall. I am so glad I did. I relished the intellectual challenge and the supportive atmosphere of the school.

What is your favorite King Hall memory?

I have several favorite memories:

• Getting an “A-” in Commercial Law from Professor Pierre Loisseaux in my second year.
• Taking three tax classes from Professor Bruce Wolk: Individual Taxation, Corporate Tax, and Partnership Tax. I met every Friday afternoon in a conference room with classmates Gilda Turitz and Sam Foulk to review the week’s materials and to prepare our tax outlines. I truly enjoyed our study group meetings and the grades we got for our efforts.
• Drinking coffee for the first time in my life (from the downstairs vending machines — I didn’t know any better). I needed coffee to study at night.
• My fellow classmates in our small group.
• My law professors.

How have you stayed connected to King Hall?

I have stayed connected to King Hall in several ways. I have financially contributed to the school. I have attended school reunions.

Dean Kevin Johnson and I reach out to each other periodically. He invites me to events at King Hall. When I received the Solano County Bar Association’s First Annual Legal Trailblazers Award in November 2022, I was honored that Dean Johnson attended the awards dinner as my guest and as one of the featured speakers.

I will be the keynote speaker for the UC Davis School of Law Martin Luther King Jr. Dinner for admitted students on April 7, 2023.

Of what are you proudest?

I am proud to be a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Hall alumna. I am very proud of my daughter and my grandson.

I am proud to have become part of the fabric of my community where I have been reminded monthly over the past two-plus decades of the impact of my presence on the Solano County bench. I had frequently opened my courtroom to visiting classrooms from local elementary and high schools. Teachers and parents have told me that thereafter some of the students wanted to become lawyers and judges.

I have been thanked multiple times by defendants and/or their family members for how I sentenced them, how I treated them in the courtroom, and the positive impact it had on their lives. I recently encountered in a restaurant a woman who told me she was fourteen years old two decades ago when I sentenced her alcoholic father to a long-term inpatient rehabilitation program. She said that he had completed the program and had been clean and sober ever since. Her eyes teared up as she thanked me repeatedly and told me that I had saved her family.

I have been thanked by police officers, crime victims, trial jurors, political leaders, colleagues, attorneys, and many others for the way that I managed my judicial power.

Judges have a unique and fearsome power. I tried always to be mindful of the extraordinary power that I wielded over the lives of so many. I tried to use that power humbly, thoughtfully, and always in the service of justice.

I am proud to have contributed substantively and positively to the legal life of my community and to my beloved profession.

Do you have any advice for current law students?

I would advise current law students to form small study groups which would meet weekly for individual classes for the purpose of preparing the class outline on a continuing basis throughout the quarter. When the time arrives for finals, the class outline will be already assembled and ready to study.

I would also advise current students to keep an open mind about where your ultimate professional home will be. Expose yourselves to various areas of the law as you move through law school and at the beginnings of your professional careers. Eventually, you will find a career place in which you wish to settle.

I began law school intending to become a business lawyer. I worked for Legal Aid in Yolo County during the summer after my first year. I worked for a general solo practitioner after my second year. Ultimately, I ended up being a prosecutor and a judge, a public servant. I could never have predicted this journey when I first began law school.