Biden Public Defenders Turned Judges Begin to Make Mark on Bench

The two decades Kate Menendez spent as a federal public defender representing people who couldn’t afford an attorney in Minnesota taught her the importance of never kicking someone while they’re down.

It’s a lesson that stuck with Menendez, now a 52-year-old federal trial judge in the state, as she mulled the sentence of criminal defendant Greg Easley, who had been found guilty of possessing a machine gun while trafficking drugs.

Easley was raised by a single mother who struggled with substance addiction. He grew up in “extreme poverty” and was a victim of domestic violence, said his lawyer, Robert Richman, according to a transcript of the sentencing hearing in April.

But Easley also was a mentor to children in his community, attempting to steer them away from the kinds of decisions that led to his criminal record. He also earned his commercial driver’s license as his case was pending, hoping to build a team of drivers for his trucking company in the future.

Menendez made a point of praising Easley’s “amazing work” with kids and how well he took care of his own, as well as his “amazing willpower” and entrepreneurial skills. “Your dedication to your community is really, really unmatched,” she told Easley before handing down his sentence.

Her remarks are just one example of how the unprecedented influx of judges with public defender experience appointed by President Joe Biden is beginning to put a stamp on the federal bench. Those judges bring to the bench a determination to treat criminal defendants with dignity, respect, and fairness, while also weighing public safety and accountability, according to six interviews with Biden and Barack Obama appointees and seven federal public defenders who’ve appeared before them.

Legal experts say their approach could help make defendants feel heard and perhaps reduce recidivism, even if it doesn’t necessarily result in shorter prison sentences.

Biden Appointees

Presidents who’ve prioritized diversity in their judicial appointments have historically focused on expanding the racial and gender makeup of the courts. But in recent years, judicial advocates have also called for Democrats to appoint more lawyers who’ve represented criminal defendants and civil rights plaintiffs—legal experience that’s been historically underrepresented in the federal judiciary.

Judges who’ve predominantly worked in private practice and as federal prosecutors made up more than 70% of the appellate bench at the time of a 2020 Center for American Progress study. That’s compared to 1% of circuit judges who spent most of their careers as public defenders or within a legal aid setting.

Biden has sought to upend that trend by making it a priority to appoint former public defenders to the federal bench at a historic pace in just one term. According to a Bloomberg Law analysis, Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton added at least 39 and 31 ex-public defenders to the courts, respectively, but that was over two terms.

Out of his 205 life-tenured appointments, 42, or 20%, have spent part of their careers as public defenders, such as Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. That number also includes 11 ex-public defenders to the federal circuit courts, breaking the previous record of five former public defenders appointed to those courts under Obama.

Some appointees who spent the bulk of their careers as public defenders include Judge Eunice Lee of the New York-based Second Circuit and Judge Veronica Rossman of the Colorado-based Tenth Circuit.

Lee spent the entirety of her more than two-decade career at New York’s appellate defender office. Rossman spent several stints in the joint federal public defender’s office for Colorado and Wyoming over two decades, working her way up to appellate chief and later senior counsel.

Jackson, whom Biden first appointed to the D.C. Circuit, is the first Supreme Court justice to have public defender experience. Seven more of Biden’s nominees with that background are pending in the Senate.

Recognizing Humanity

What judges like Menendez bring to the role is more of a familiarity “with the challenges that entrenched multi-generational poverty presents to people who often end up in the criminal justice system,” she said in an interview.

Close exposure to the hardships that marked her clients’ lives gave her “greater empathy” for the struggles of people who end up in the justice system.

Six judges, including four Biden and two Obama appointees, said in interviews that their public defender years emphasized how crucial it is for judges to treat criminal offenders with dignity, respect, and even compassion.

Several spoke to witnessing how childhood trauma, substance addiction, mental health challenges, and poverty had contributed to the choices their past clients made throughout their lives—ultimately landing them before a judge.

It’s a cycle that Judge Angel Kelley, 56, who’s served on Massachusetts’s federal district court since 2021, saw as she represented juvenile offenders at The Legal Aid Society in New York.

Recognizing that “people come from complicated and sometimes chaotic lives” has guided her approach to “seeing the humanity of people” who have come before her in court as a state and federal judge.

Treating defendants with dignity isn’t unique to ex-public defenders turned judges. But the qualities that Corey Endo, the first assistant federal defender in the Western District of Washington state, has observed from Judge Tana Lin “has taken other judges decades to achieve, if they ever achieve it at all,” she said.

Endo recounted how she’s seen Lin approach drug-related violations of probation in some cases Endo has handled herself or observed in court.

“With her experience working directly with people who have suffered from substance use disorders and trauma,” Lin has understood some of those violations “as a function of things much bigger than her or the courtroom,” Endo said.

Lin wasn’t available for an interview when contacted by Bloomberg Law.

Public Defender’s Perspective

Judges such as Menendez and Kelley have also brought with them the experience of representing people with limited knowledge of the law or the legal process.

Explaining “really difficult concepts to people, especially about incredibly serious matters like the sentencing guidelines or the Fourth Amendment,” was a important part of Menendez’s relationship with her clients, she said.

It’s why she’s mindful of how she communicates to defendants in the courtroom, with a focus on explaining things in “plain and understandable ways,” Menendez said.

Those judges also bring a greater respect for the difficulties that public defenders encounter in their jobs.

Judge Arenda Allen, who’s been on the federal trial court in Alexandria, Va., since 2011, encountered clients and their families who didn’t see her as a “real lawyer” because she was an appointed attorney. Some clients, frustrated with the nature of their situation, would take their anger out on her, she said.

“I was given strength so I could talk to my defendants, and if they spit on me through the glass window, I don’t care. I’m gonna defend you anyway,” she said. “If mama says, ‘You’re just not a paid lawyer,’ I’d think—I am a paid lawyer. I’ve been working Saturday nights at three in the morning when the kids have gone to sleep.”

Allen, who worked as a federal prosecutor and public defender before joining the federal bench, also contrasted the time constraints and limited resources she and her fellow federal defenders worked under, compared to her time as an assistant US attorney.

Working in a smaller office with fewer lawyers, she’d have to drive 15 to 45 minutes to see clients in different detention facilities before rushing to make court appearances.

“I worked way harder as an assistant federal public defender,” Allen said.

The Impact

Biden’s judicial picks with public defender experience have been frequent targets of scrutiny by Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans, who’ve said that those nominees would become soft on crime judges with biases toward criminal defendants.

But treating defendants with respect and dignity shouldn’t be conflated with lenient sentencing, said Chief Judge Michael McShane of Oregon’s federal trial court, a 2011 Obama appointee.

“You can treat somebody with respect and still take the safety of the community very seriously, understand the dangerousness of a particular defendant or the seriousness of an offense and what it requires in federal sentencing,” McShane, 63, said. “Most people are facing lengthy prison terms. We can impose those prison terms and still be humane at the same time.”

There’s some evidence that when criminal defendants feel heard, respected, and treated fairly by the judge handing down their sentence, they’re less likely to end up back in court for another crime.

Studies have shown that when criminal defendants view court processes as fair and feel that they’ve been treated with respect by “caring and well-intentioned judges,” they’re more likely to cooperate with legal authorities and follow the law in the future.

A judge who shows genuine interest in the well-being and future of a criminal defendant, and the progress that person has made toward a better future, is more likely to motivate changes in behavior from that defendant—even if the judge hands down a lengthy sentence.

At Easley’s sentencing hearing related to his machine gun and drug trafficking case, Richman had cautioned that incarceration could end up “derailing his life” and the “fragile” progress he’d made, according to a transcript of the hearing.

“This situation has forced me to change the path of my life and has better prepared me to become the man and father I know I can be,” Easley, 35, read from a letter during his sentencing hearing, “one my children can admire and feel secure with. I have the ability to re-create the narrative in my life, and that is what I plan to do.”

Menendez didn’t shy away from describing the gravity of his offense “in the midst of a terrible scourge of gun crimes” in the US, adding that he couldn’t effectively mentor others if he continued to break the law. House arrest would have understated the seriousness of the violation, she said, according to the hearing transcript.

But she also acknowledged the potential she saw in him to be a role model, “the guy that you want to be and are in your heart,” she said.

“My time as a public defender really taught me about how much power a judge’s words can have when spoken from the bench,” Menendez said in an interview. “I’m mindful that my words are magnified by my robe and that it’s important to emphasize the humanity and the potential of every single person in my courtroom.”

Menendez sentenced Easley to serve 18 months in prison, which wasn’t the 10 months of home arrest sought by his defense lawyer but also wasn’t the 57 months of incarceration prosecutors recommended. (Easley, who is now at the Federal Correctional Complex in Florence, Minn., wasn’t immediately available for an interview.)

Richman, who had worked with Menendez in the Minnesota federal public defender’s office, said in an interview that he knew “she would recognize just how extraordinary” Easley’s transformation was.

The lawyer left the courtroom that day feeling that Menendez “had really” seen Easley “as a person.”

“And I hope that he came away feeling like she had,” Richman said.