When the topic of newly appointed Sacramento Superior Court Judge Laurie M. Earl was brought up among a group of attorneys at lunch, one attorney observed that he had never known anyone to express ill feelings about her. Several instantly agreed.

"I've never met anyone who does not like her," said prosecutor Anne Marie Schubert when asked about that observation. "She understands everyone's role and has worked on both sides. (As a judge), all people will get respect from her: staff, witnesses, lawyers."

And, extrapolating a personality trait from another practitioner's observation, her demeanor on the bench may not suffer the seemingly contagious judicial ailment of ego. One defense attorney said Earl was walking down the courthouse corridor when someone called out, "Hello Judge."

Earl looked around, not realizing that she was the person who was being greeted.

For him, the anecdote captured the down-to-earth side of newly appointed judge.

"She is proud of what she has achieved., but she will never let it go to her head," said Michael Bowman, a Sacramento defense attorney. "She is absolutely a real person."

Bowman, who worked as an trial adversary, pointed out a couple of other traits he thinks will make her a great judge.

"Trials are pressure packed, and something is always going wrong," he said. "Yet she was always able to handle herself with dignity and compassion to all sides. That is a unique quality and exactly what a judge needs to have."

Earl started her career in the Public Defender's Office, then switched to the District Attorney's Office, briefly working for the Office of Inspector General before being appointed to the bench. Juries liked her because she seemed very reasonable, rather than someone who is overly emotional such that their judgment is questionable because they "cannot evaluate a situation or a case because they are a zealot," Bowman said.

Because Earl has worked as both a prosecutor and defense attorney, "she is able to see both sides of an issue and make decisions out of fairness and what the law dictates without an agenda," he said. "She was an outstanding prosecutor. She was extremely fair, and because she was a former public defender, she was able to look at a case from both sides."

Earl was a member of the Sacramento County District Attorney's DNA Committee, which reviewed and approved cases for testing at the county forensics laboratory. Earl and Schubert helped file the state's first "John Doe" arrest warrant based on a DNA profile. The warrant needed to be filed to prevent the statute of limitations from precluding future prosecution. In a second "John Doe" DNA arrest warrant, the office got the first cold case hit in the nation, leading to the arrest and conviction of the rapist.

"It was fun to be on the cutting edge of creativity in the legal system," she said. "Some of these things had not been done before."

Earl was also involved in helping train and implement procedures designed to facilitate the presentation of medical evidence at trial. One essential ingredient for successful courtroom presentation of scientific evidence is to spend enough time with the expert to facilitate explaining scientific evidence to lay people. Earl said because she did not have a science background, she worked hard to dissect and understand scientific evidence, making it easier to then explain to lay jurors.

"She was the most prepared prosecutor I have ever seen," said Schubert, who worked with Earl for ten years in the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office. "She knows her case completely and does not learn it at trial."

Earl added that extensive preparation is necessary to learn "the weaknesses in your case and what jurors are going to think."

Early in her career, Earl found her niche in the courtroom. And that is where she spent virtually her entire career.

"After a year doing research for a civil firm, I decided that behind a desk was no place for me," she wrote in an article for her college alumni magazine.

"I fell in love with criminal law," she said. Besides being the forum for giving a voice to the accused and protecting victims, criminal law attracted her because the "facts are so interesting."

As a public defender, Earl "felt like I was a voice for people who did not have a voice. I took making sure people's rights were protected very seriously."

Over the years, she found herself having more 'sympathy for the victims,' rather than the accused. "I became disillusioned with the way the clients treated people, including myself. I just started having more sympathy for the victims."

Earl added that she has a lot of respect for public defenders. "Not only are the clients sometimes difficult, and not always thankful or kind, but the public, including juries and your family and friends, are not always understanding about representing those accused of horrible crimes."

In 1995, after six years as a Public Defender, she decided to transfer to the District Attorney's Office. In a system that is adversarial, making the change from defending to prosecuting can be "not an easy transition emotionally."

Some of her former colleagues in the Public Defender's Office viewed her as a traitor, while some of the folks in the District Attorney's Office viewed her with suspicion. "It took some time for things to settle down," she said, but within six months to a year, the transition was complete.

She had found her niche in the District Attorney's Office.

Earl worked on the offices trial team, handling serious crimes and major felonies. She was also on the office's DNA committee, which in part reviewed cases for further investigation.

She stayed nearly ten years in the District Attorney's Office before transferring to the state Office of Inspector General, which investigates allegations of employee misconduct in the state prison system.

Early this year, she was tapped by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for a position on the Superior Court bench.

"I'm in the middle now," she said. "My role now is to uphold and apply the law. I've become more a student of the law than I have been in the past. You really have to stay on top of things."

Currently, she is handling a criminal calendar. She does not have any immediate plans to handle a different calendar and is content to let the Superior Court assign her as it sees fit.

Earl, 43, lived in San Jose as a young child, moving to Modesto in seventh grade. She attended UC Berkeley for her undergraduate degree, and obtained her JD from Lincoln Law School of Sacramento. Her family, which includes boys ages five and eight, lives in Sacramento. The Superior Court judge position pays $139,784.

Earl said a business law course at Berkeley her junior year got her interested in the law. She worked as a bartender while attending law school.

"Now that I am a judge I will not forget where I came from," she added. "It is important for a judge to be a regular person. You want to be taken seriously, but I do not believe in being overly somber about it."

July / August 2005