‘I’m so grateful.’ Merced County’s youngest judge says she’s ready to hold the gavel

Stephanie L. Jamieson was at the park with her dog when she learned earlier this week Gov. Gavin Newsom had appointed her to fill a vacancy on the Merced County Superior Court.

While that calm setting may be the complete opposite of hectic courthouse, Jamieson nonetheless was “elated and relieved” to learn she would be making history.

“I’m so grateful to the community of Merced to have this opportunity and to be able to serve them in this new role and in this capacity as Superior Court judge,” Jamieson, a Merced County deputy public defender, told the Sun-Star. “I’m very excited.”

A Patterson native and University of Santa Clara School of Law graduate, the 37-year-old will be the youngest person to ever sit on the Merced County Superior Court. The last time someone under age 40 served on the court was attorney Marc Garcia, who was appointed at age 39 in 2007.

Jamieson started on her path to a legal career as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley, after she played the role of lawyer in an epidemiology class mock trial.

At UC Berkeley she majored in German after two years studying natural sciences at University of Kassel in Germany. After the mock trial, her professor recommended she apply to law school.

“And that was it,” Jamieson said. “It just felt right as soon as I started studying for the LSAT, as soon as I set foot on campus at law school, it just felt right in a way that the sciences never did.”

After attending Santa Clara University School of Law, Jamieson went on to get a master of laws degree from California Western School of Law. The subsequent masters in the legal field helped her to focus her studies on the practice of law and trial advocacy, something she said helped fill in the gaps in her legal education.

“It gave me the chance to have hands-on practical experience with clients, with cases, from the arraignment stage all the way through to the verdict or sentencing stage of a case, including the discovery and investigations,” Jamieson said.

“I didn’t feel law school adequately prepared me for the practice of law, so the master of laws was my way of doing that, and it absolutely achieved that goal.”

Working as a defense attorney

Upon graduating at the height of the Great Recession, many government offices were laying off attorneys and not hiring new ones.

To gain experience, Jamieson went back to Patterson to “hang out a shingle” and take on as many cases as she could, plus work with other attorneys, including the Victor B. Vertner Law Office and Morales Law Firm in San Jose.

Her cases ranged from DUIs to sex crimes to resisting arrest — anything that allowed her to lend a hand on a case. “I worked with various attorneys, anybody who really needed an extra set of hands or an extra brain on a case. I was happy to help them out,” she said.

Still, a job with a public defender’s office was her goal. In 2012, she took a job as deputy public defender in Merced County.

She described working in Merced County as a “dream come true” since it’s relatively close to her hometown of Patterson. “Every day was a new challenge, a very big misdemeanor caseload, but I got to work with some of the most amazing colleagues who were helpful and friendly and open and eager to help me learn,” she said of her eight years of experience in the public defenders office.

The kinds of cases she handled in her role as deputy public defender ran the gamut, according to Public Defender Vincent Andrade.

That included misdemeanors, felonies, homicide cases and juvenile delinquency cases. She also filed a number of pre-trial writs and an appeal in the 5th District Court of Appeal, he said. She led the misdemeanor unit at the public defender’s office, and was a leader in developing a homeless court in Merced County.

“She is smart and hard-working,” Andrade said via text. “These two qualities are critical given the high number of cases of varying complexity and type she will hear as a judge.”

Andrade added, “Her compassion assures that the interests and concerns of all parties and witnesses will be recognized and considered by her.”

Looking forward

Now, as a Merced County Superior Court judge, Jamieson knows in some ways, she’ll be starting over.

“I’m going to be learning new fields of law, going from a specialist to a generalist in a lot of ways,” she said. “I’m very, very excited about that opportunity, so for right now I’m just going to do whatever is asked of me, fill whatever role I’m needed in, and I’m just so excited to have that chance and to be able to do that in my career. So few people have that opportunity.”

According to the Judicial Council of California, Superior Court judges are normally elected every six years on a nonpartisan ballot in a general election. Vacancies on the court are filled by the governor by appointments, like Jamieson’s, and those who are elected or appointed have to have been licensed to practice law in the state for 10 years or served as a judge in another court in the state.

Superior Courts have trial jurisdiction over criminal and civil cases, according to the Judicial Council of California, and between 2018 and 2019, approximately 6 million were filed in Superior courts statewide.

Ten other judges or commissioners sit on the bench in the Merced County Superior Court, and there are currently three vacant seats.

The annual compensation for Superior Court judges is $223,829.

This story was originally published December 4, 2021 at 5:00 AM.