Judges and Judiciary
Aug. 13, 2002
'Hand In There,' Judge Tells People He Did
SACRAMENTO - Doors open and close. Names hang in the air a few seconds and fade, replaced by more names. A blur of orange jumpsuits come and go. The scene is reminiscent of a transit station, but it's the courtroom that belongs to Judge Gary E. Ransom.
Gary E. Ransom
Sacramento Superior Court judge
Career highlights: Assigned by Presiding Court Judge Michael Garcia, 2002; appointed by Gov. Edmund G. Brown, 1981; assistant public defender, Sacramento, 1974-81
Law school: McGeorge School of Law, 1974
Age: 60
Ransom, 60, retired in February from the Sacramento Superior Court, but he returned immediately as an assigned judge to resume control of Department 8, a law-and-motion home court.
"Gary is probably the most efficient calendar court judge you're going to find," said Christopher Wing, a Sacramento criminal defense attorney. "He just knows how to run a calendar. You know he's not going to waste time. He knows what cases are worth."
After returning to the court, Ransom not only assumed his old duties, he also picked up Proposition 36 drug treatment cases, which he does on Fridays.
"I said you can't retire unless you promise to come back," said Presiding Judge Michael Garcia. "He's so good at what he does. He's gracious. He's outgoing. He's an active listener who gives clear responses. When people leave his courtroom they have a clear understanding of his rulings."
Counselors who regularly appear before Ransom say he keeps a sense of humor as he breezes through 40 to 50 cases a day.
"Gary likes to have a good time," said Ron Castro, a Sacramento criminal defense lawyer. "He'll use humor to teach a point" to novice attorneys who waste the court's time making extraneous arguments, Castro said.
"He'll look at them and smile and he'll say I knew that," Castro said. "I've been doing that for 20 years."
"I like the fact that he can control his courtroom," said Deputy District Attorney Judith Bria. "He gets to the point. He doesn't want to belabor the issue."
While Ransom obviously loves his job, it does have drawbacks. The jurist said he doesn't drive on the Capitol City Freeway - U.S. Highway 50 - if he can help it.
"Part of my job is to tell people they're on suspended [driver's] licenses," Ransom said. "They can't drive. And I'm driving along on 50 and the person looks over and they see it's me and they figure I recognize them. I don't remember names, but I remember faces. And they say, I've got a suspended license, and they start driving all over like this."
Ransom makes a motion of a car weaving in and out of a lane trying to escape.
"So I don't go on 50 that often. It's too dangerous."
Gary Elliott Ransom, who always uses his middle initial because "it sounds more professional," was born and raised in New Brunswick, N.J. His father is a retired mail carrier. His mother, now deceased, worked as a domestic.
"While segregation may not have been legal, it was a fact," said Ransom, who is black. "The net effect was you had to make your own way. Most black kids quit school to work at the factory in town. A lot of them had talent. But a lot of them didn't make it because no one told them they could make it."
After graduating from high school, Ransom went to Rutgers University, in his hometown, because it was the only college he could afford. He started off majoring in engineering, but "physics wiped me out," and he opted for economics.
Ransom entered the ROTC, figuring he would make a career in the military, like a cousin of his who retired as a two-star general. After graduating from Rutgers in 1965, Ransom worked as a field representative in the New Jersey Civil Rights Division of the Department of Public Safety helping prepare legal cases.
A year later, he joined the Air Force as a second lieutenant and was assigned to B-52s as an electronic warfare officer defending against radar and missiles.
Ransom never thought of becoming a lawyer during high school and college, he said, "because everyone I knew who was going to become a lawyer was just smarter than the dickens."
Until he entered the Air Force, he had never seen a black lawyer or judge. But he thought back on the days when he helped lawyers prepare cases at the public safety department and decided he could do that. Ransom was attending navigation school at Mather Air Force Base in Sacramento when he noticed that the bar exam results put nearby McGeorge School of Law on top. So he left the military and entered law school.
He earned his juris doctorate in 1974 and became the first black assistant public defender in Sacramento County.
"The jail was located [near the courthouse] when I first began practicing, and they would tell the inmates - they had no concept of a black public defender - here comes your probation officer," Ransom said.
While on a visit back East to visit his mother, who was dying of cancer, she proudly introduced him to the patient in the next bed as "my son, the lawyer."
Ransom blurted out, "Mom, you've got to hang in there because I'm going to become a judge."
It was not a thought he had ever entertained before. But, he ran unopposed for a seat left vacant by a retiring judge, and Gov. Jerry Brown appointed him to the municipal court in June 1981, jump-starting his bench duties by seven months.
Ransom counts among his mentors Sacramento's first black judge, Tom Dougherty, now deceased.
"He wouldn't embarrass you," Ransom said. "He treated defendants well. He was just a nice guy and a close friend."
Ransom said he gets great satisfaction from his job.
"Not a month goes by that someone doesn't say, 'you helped change my life,' Ransom said. "I hear that at least once a month. Plus, it's interesting watching lawyers develop, grow and blossom."
Ransom said he was presiding over some Proposition 36 cases last month when a lawyer waiting for a case in the courtroom approached him.
"He says, 'You know, I used to live underneath a bridge,'" Ransom said. "'I remember being before you. You made a difference in my life. I got my act together. Everything you told me in court' - and I give lectures - 'everything you told me in court was right.'
"And he said, 'Now I go out and find people living beneath the bridges. I find homeless people and I help them get off drugs.' Good for you, I said, and I gave him a hug."
Ransom added, "On the other hand, there are some people you just got to put away."
Castro, the criminal defense lawyer, said Ransom has a "reservoir of understanding" stemming from his experience as a public defender, a rare background for attorneys appointed to the bench. However, the lawyer said he and the judge have had "flat-out disagreements."
"On a personal basis I really like him," Castro said. "On a professional basis, he has to be a judge in an environment that is decidedly pro-prosecution. He's found a way to walk the minefield and maintain a sense of balance on a tightrope."
Ransom said he doesn't agonize over his decisions.
"My attitude is I follow the law," he said. "If the law says this is it and the lawyers say this is it, then this is it. I don't write the law. I just see that the law is enforced in court."
Ransom and his wife of 36 years, Gloria, have no children. Two years ago, he learned he had prostate cancer. Since then he has been on a crusade to persuade black men - who have one of the highest prostate cancer rates in the world - to get tested.
His résumé states that his goal in life "is to help others who think that the odds are against them to learn to believe in themselves."
On those Fridays when he does Proposition 36 cases, Ransom exhorts each of the addicts to "hang in there."
"They have to see that somebody in the system is really pulling for them," Ransom said.
Recent cases handled by Ransom and the attorneys involved:
People v. Haynes, 02F00337
Prosecution: Deputy District Attorney Judith Bria, Sacramento.
Defense: Jeffrey Rosenblum, Sacramento.
People v. Vallejo, 01F04355
Prosecution: Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Moncrief, Sacramento
Defense: Gerald Singer, Sacramento
People v. Hamilton, 02F056054
Prosecution: Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Kenney, Sacramento
Defense: Assistant Public Defender Michael Oden, Sacramento.
People v. Menefee, 02F02652
Prosecution: Deputy District Attorney Stanley Kubochi, Sacramento.
Defense: Assistant Public Defender Andrea Miles, Sacramento.
People v. Stewart, 02F03428
Prosecution: Deputy District Attorney Denise Lewis, Sacramento.
Defense: Joseph de Illy, Sacramento
Philip Carrizosa
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