Episode 10: Joanne Motoike
Former Presiding Judge of the Juvenile Court, Superior Court, Orange County, California; Now-Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District, Division Three
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Show Notes
At the time of this interview, Judge Joanne Motoike served as the Presiding Judge of the Juvenile Court in Orange County, California. She was subsequently elevated to the California Court of Appeal. In this episode, she discusses her time on the bench and her remarkable career prior to the bench serving as a senior deputy public defender at the Orange County Public Defender’s Office, and as a trial attorney in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at the Hague.
Relevant episode links:
Judge Joanne Motoike - Facebook, Judge Kazuharu Makino - LinkedIn, Judge Maria Hernandez, Judge Lewis Clapp
About Justice Joanne Motoike:
Judge Joanne Motoike
Joanne Motoike was appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown last summer to fill a vacancy on the Orange County Superior Court created by the retirement of Judge Nancy Pollard. She was then appointed to the California Court of Appeal by Governor Newsom.
Justice Motoike is the daughter of second-generation Japanese-Americans who own a family farm. She developed an interest in the law, she said, after learning the story of her father, who was sent to an internment camp during World War II, and similar stories of other Japanese-American families.
She received an undergraduate diploma from UC Irvine before earning her J.D. from Loyola Law School.
Judge Motoike was an Orange County deputy public defender from 1994-2006. From 2006-08, she served as a trial attorney for the United Nations at the International Criminal Tribunal at the Hague, prosecuting high-level political figures for murder, torture, cruelty and crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia.
In 2008, she returned to the Public Defender’s Office, where she served as senior deputy public defender until her court appointment. She has presided over both misdemeanor and felony jury trials.
Transcript
We are welcoming on the show Judge Joanne Motoike from the Orange County Superior Courts. On this show, we chronicle women's journeys to the bar, bench and beyond and seek to inspire the next generation to do the same. I wanted to start first from the beginning about how you decided to get into the law. What drew you to it?
What drew me was, partly my paternal side, my dad's family's experiences after World War II. His family was interned as a part of the Japanese internment and although they never spoke about it, I always knew there was something there. With that, it drove me to want to give people a voice, make sure that they had a voice in proceedings, in law and court. I set out with that goal, but I didn't know if it was going to be law or it was going to be some other avenue that I could work towards in making sure that our system was accessible and that the people who could be heard should be heard.
That was the path that sent me towards law. After I did an internship with the Public Defender’s Office here in Orange County in college, that pretty much solidified my desire to go into the law because I thought, “This is the perfect marriage of being able to give people a voice, make sure that the courts and system are accessible and things are at least just.” After that experience, I decided I'm going to apply to law school and that's what I'm going to do. That's the impetus for my path to at least law.
That's a very personal family history to that decision. It takes a certain amount of courage to have faith in the system to produce justice when you've seen it not operate well. I'm wondering what made you still have faith that it could be applied.
The interesting thing with my whole father's side is that they never complained. It was never talked about in negative terms. It was something that they experienced that happened because of the times, but there was also a little bit of understanding or acceptance of what happened. It came to me that way, so I didn't formulate the opinion of like, “Was this just or unjust until I started with Korematsu and all of this? Everything else came to light because my family rarely talked about it.” There's a little bit of an idealistic person in me that thinks, “Everything should be fair. If we do everything right, it will be fair.”
My mom had a completely different experience. At the same time, growing up during World War II, she lived in Hawaii. She was there after Pearl Harbor was bombed. She had a completely different perspective because, being Japanese-American, she never was subjected to anything concerning internment or any comments or things that were being said about Japanese-Americans then. I had that balanced viewpoint as well because she never expressed any issues with that. The idealistic part of me is, “If you do everything, everything should be fair.” As long as everybody gets a voice and hopefully can be heard, then the chips will fall where they may and the system will work.
You had this opportunity to also do some international work. How did that come about? How was that?
The law is the perfect marriage of being able to give people a voice.
It's a happy, fortunate coincidence for me because one of my colleagues at the Public Defender’s Office at that time and I'd been in the Public Defender’s Office for twelve years by then, had mentioned because I was saying that I wanted to do something on a bigger scale. I wanted to still pursue that need to give people a voice and make sure everything's accessible. I was talking to him about doing something on a broader scale.
He had mentioned, “Why don't you turn your name into the United Nations? They're looking for people at the tribunals.” I did. I applied online and then they called me for the interview. The next thing I know, they're offering me the job. It's a happy coincidence because, at that time, they were looking for trial attorneys or people who had trial experience.
Unfortunately, by then, I had twelve years of litigation experience for the public office, it was the perfect timing for that to happen. I was so fortunate to get that position because it did broaden a lot of my legal skills and my horizons beyond anything that I could ever imagine for myself. It was a wonderful opportunity. I worked there for under two years.
What cases did you try? How did that experience or those skills differ? Were they the same as the work you had done as a public defender?
Coming from the Public Defender’s Office, I was in criminal defense. I worked with the prosecutor's office for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. In that position, much bigger trial teams, larger-scale cases than I would get at the Public Defender’s Office because most likely, as everybody probably knows who's reading this show, in the Public Defender’s Office, we have single clients. We may have co-defendants in the sense of maybe 5 or, at most, 10 when we're talking about complex fraud cases.
We have very limited-sized cases in the Public Defender’s Office, at least locally. In the Federal Public Defender’s Office, you're going to get bigger cases. The scale of the case was bigger. In the case that I assisted in the trial on, we had over 1,000 exhibits and additionally, everything in that court was electronic. This was back in 2006. We're talking about no paper. Everything was published to the triers of fact, which is a trial chamber of three judges from various countries and nothing was produced in paper.
It was all electronically published in English and then it would be published in a language that was native to the witness, whoever was testifying as to that particular document. The trial was broadcast in five different languages. We operated every day but on half-day schedules. We shared the courtrooms with other trials that were ongoing as well. The duration, scope and size of the case were completely different than my work at the Public Defender’s Office. Additionally, being on the prosecution side was a little bit different. Those were the main differences.
I had to learn all new rules of procedure and evidence. Luckily, they took a lot of common law aspects from the criminal side. They operated off of civil procedural, evidentiary rules but it was all new jurisprudence that was coming out of the other existing tribunals. One of them being Rwanda. We would look to that guidance from those trial courts and Appeals Chambers to help us argue for our positions and set what procedures we needed for our trial.
A lot of differences but in essence, when you get down to it, it's offenses and elements. I don't mean to minimize it at all because the offenses that we had were all the crimes of war. Learning those was also a new experience for me. In the end, we still had the common set elements that we had to make to establish our case and prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. There were some similarities and then some big differences.
The kinds of trade cases that we tried covered the whole area that was former Yugoslavia. One of the accused that I stepped into to start working on his case as part of a big team at the tribunal was envisioning a greater Serbia than Slobodan Milosevic. He had multiple crime sites in various countries. The trial that I ended up helping present to the trial chamber was a smaller trial by tribunals standards. We still had ten different crime sites but they were all in Macedonia.
I was wondering about how that particular court operated because I have some modest experience with international courts as well with the court in Costa Rica, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and then also the Inter-American Commission in Washington DC. My experience with those was more that they were different types of proceedings. There's a diplomatic aspect to them. There's also somewhat of an evidentiary aspect, not the same as your trials but at the same time, an appellate aspect, all wrapped into one proceeding. I was wondering if there was some flavor of that in the tribunals as well.
We would have issues that were more diplomatic-type. We would have those as far as discovery. Those would come up before our actual trial started. There were documents that we would have to seek permission to disclose and things like that would engage various countries. As far as the appeals process, we had Appeals Chamber. Whatever issue needed to be reviewed by the Appeals Chamber would be separate and apart from the trial itself.
It's a little more what you would expect to see in a domestic.
That's interesting to know about your experience.
How did that compare with the cases that you worked on or your work as a public defender? We talked a little bit about some of the cases of the Hague and in your time as a public defender. What kinds of cases did you work on? What may be stood out from your time as a defender?
It would be the more complex gang allegation cases, more the complex homicides. Those cases are cases like capital cases that I never tried but it was assigned to at least one of them before I was appointed to the judgeship. It’s the complexity of those cases, as far as the leg work that you need to do to work up the capital type of case where you're going back in your client's background and developing for that penalty phase. That was probably some of the most interesting work I've done with the Public Defender’s Office. Some of my most routine calendar assignments at the Public Defender’s Office were interesting to me because I love being busy.
I like to be able to learn all different things and have everything coming at me at once, which I thrive in and enjoy doing. That allowed me to be busy in a good way. The other assignment that I enjoyed at the Public Defender’s Office was my written appeals assignment, which a little under three years I was assigned there. In that assignment, we handle the pretrial motions on felony cases. Sometimes the trial attorneys will do it themselves. Sometimes they'll look to the written appeals department to help or assist. You're on-call to all the lawyers in the Public Defender’s Office if they have a pressing or urgent legal issue that they need your assistance in researching, developing and analyzing. We were available to do that.
Everything should be fair if we do everything right.
Also, writing appellate briefs either to our local appellate division or seeking petitions for review through the District Court of Appeal. That was an interesting assignment. This is probably one of my favorite assignments. I also liked working at Juvenile Court, which was doing juvenile justice cases and child welfare cases because, in those assignments, I felt like you could connect because the whole purpose in juvenile justice, even at that time, was rehabilitation.
It was a great assignment for me because I felt like we could try to help improve a young person's life or at least outcomes. On the child welfare side, we represented the parents and the child abuse allegation type of cases where their children may have been removed or not. That was trying to reunify a family. The outcomes were beneficial and it made the job worthwhile on top of everything that you normally do as a public defender and the reason why you work there.
How did you decide to join the bench or apply to be a judge? What was the first inkling to do that?
Whenever people ask me, “What was your path to the bench?” I always say, “It was an unintended path.” By no means did I ever think that I would be standing here talking to you as a judicial officer. That's why every day, I pinched myself thinking, “Is this real that I get the call from the governor?” My goal was to work in the public sector and do exactly what I set out to do.
After I'd been with the Public Defender’s Office for twelve years, then I went to the Hague, I came back and then I did it a few more years at the Public Defender’s Office because fortunately, they took me back, at that time, I thought, “With my experiences at this point, I feel like maybe I could do something, pushing forward that accessibility and trying to make sure that people get a voice differently. That is as a bench officer.”
My colleague from the Public Defender’s Office, the same one who told me to apply to the UN, suggested, “Why don't you throw your name in for the bench?” I thought, “This is not going to happen.” I wanted to be able to answer that question and I knew they would ask me, “Why do you want to be a trial court judge? Why do you want to be a judge?” I thought long and hard about that question before I turned in my application. I wanted to make sure that this is what I wanted to do because I thought I knew what I wanted to do and I'd been doing it. That's my unintended path. Luckily, the governor called and appointed me. I’m very appreciative of that.
Sometimes it's helpful to have someone give you that nudge or suggestion for things but we might not think immediately as in our scare. It's good that you had someone to nudge forward both to the head opportunity and the judicial.
We all need a nudge.
Take a moment to think, “I could do that. That would be a good way to serve.”
Even if nothing happens off it, you won't know until you do it. Sometimes we're our worst enemy. We're the ones who prevent us from doing anything because we think, “Everybody else but not me. You but not me. It would never happen for me.” It does take a mentor or somebody to look at you and say, “You need to do this.” Even if nothing comes a bit, you won't know unless you do it. That's when I finally said, “I'm going to do it. If nothing comes of it, I am very happy with where I am anyways in my job and what I'm doing. I'll wait it out and see.”
Also, a common thread is the mentors and sponsors along the way. Sometimes people come in at the right time and nudge you in the right direction, some stay with you throughout your career and sometimes people would come in at the right time with the right idea for you to pursue. In terms of your career of mentors and sponsors, you have one person nudging you along. Did you have other folks you consider to be mentors or sponsors? How did their help show up for you?
I have to admit that at the beginning of my career, I was focusing on my career and enjoying what I was doing. If I look back on it, after about ten years in the office and as an attorney, I do see how a lot of people came into my life in my professional career and became that mentor to me, unbeknownst to me because I was always in awe about what they were doing and how they were doing their job.
It takes you looking at it, taking yourself out of it, looking back and saying, “These folks were all playing a part in shaping me and also solidifying the foundation for moving forward in my career.” Unbeknownst to me but if I had to look back, I do realize that there were a lot of judges on that path in Orange County. There were a lot of public defenders and DA’s in that path. A lot of people that I worked with daily and if I look back, I'd say that all of them contributed to that foundation for me.
That's true as well and in retrospect is the only way you can see that. At the time, you're making your way through but there are a lot of secret angels that people have in their careers that you may never even know about, somebody who spoke up for you in a meeting that you were never in, that you didn't even know you were being discussed at and things like that. It's good of you to recognize that because nobody progresses without some help in that regard and somebody saying, “This person needs the opportunity.”
A lot of times, it is those folks that are in the shadows that you don't know but they are there. It does take a village.
As you have more experience than me, you see how sometimes decisions are made. Sometimes you have these a-ha moments where you go, “There must've been discussions about that years ago, which I never knew about. Somebody must've advocated as I did for somebody else.” That must've been how it happened but at the time, you had no idea. You are grateful. What advice would you give to a woman law student or lawyer considering applying for the bench?
If it's what you want, then you do it. We're doing a lot better in providing mentorship programs for attorneys and professionals who want to apply for the bench. Get involved with those mentorship programs because a lot of our benches in Orange County are participating in programs like that. Various bar organizations are also very supportive of anybody who wants to apply to the bench. Be mindful of everything that you do as a professional and an attorney because it does reflect on you. When you turn in your application, you are open to comment by your colleagues, the bench and any court appearances people that you've interacted with on a professional level. Have an opportunity to reflect on what they think about your quality.
We all need a nudge. Sometimes, we're our worst enemy.
Be mindful of your job and what you do because it does reflect on you when you come down to apply. My friend always said that the judicial appointment process is like lying naked on a beach. I'm sorry to say that but it is. You're open to your community, colleagues and peers commenting on what they truly think about you as far as your professional abilities and your ability to be a judicial officer. Go for it but while you're getting there and you're laying the foundation for your application, be mindful of how you're carrying yourself in your professional capacity.
That's good advice in terms of thinking more broadly in terms of service so that it isn't some complete surprise when you've applied. Some people have only been focused on you and suddenly, you want to serve on the bench. That's looked at differently than people who, in various ways, may have served in some public interest or community capacity before being on the bench. You're on the bench in terms of people appearing in front of you. How can people be most helpful to you in making judicial decisions, whether it's in their briefs or arguments in your court?
Being prepared if you're going to cite legal authority, know what that legal authority says and being prepared to address anything that may come up in whatever posture your case may be, even if you're in front of a bench officer doing a bench trial, being prepared with anticipated objections. It's that in addition to anything that you present as far as a written brief, knowing the cases that you've cited in that brief. Most bench officers are appreciative of lawyers who come in, are prepared and take their jobs very seriously. How we judge it is if you're prepared, you're taking your job and role seriously. That's the best way to help a judicial officer.
What about leadership? You do have a leadership role within the court administratively but also as a judge, I think about all of the things that lead someone to the bench and that is some service in some regard but then once you become a judge, you have a track and some limits on what you couldn't do that you could do before as a lawyer. I'm wondering how it's different to exemplify leadership as a judicial officer and what that looks like for you and your leading administrative.
I'll take myself out of Juvenile Court because our standards are a little bit different. There's a policy reason for us to have a little bit more about a wider lane because we're always taught judges to stay within our lane. As a trial court judge, leadership to me because this is what I always appreciated in bench officers in the trial courts, means being there and available to handle the calendar, not keeping people waiting and treating people with respect because the judges and court staff are the faces of the court when people come into the courtrooms.
I always think that shows leadership. Run your courtroom in a way that allows people with that accessibility, to access you, not wait around an hour and a half until you decide to take the bench. We've got a lot of great bench officers in our county that are mindful of that. They step up to play that leadership role because, as a judge, we are very limited in what we can do as opposed to the advocacy role. That is an important part for the public to see and know that's there. As Juvenile Court bench officers, we have a little bit wider lane because we are allowed to speak and promote services and programs that could help improve the outcomes for our youth and our families that come before us.
To a certain extent, we are allowed to speak out and try to promote things that can help the population that we serve. As an administrator, meaning as a Juvenile Court presiding judge, I get to do that all day long, which I love because everybody understands that we serve in Juvenile Court, one of the most vulnerable populations in our county. People get behind that and understand that if we can improve things on the juvenile justice side, the services and programs, then we can reduce recidivism on our end. We can ensure public safety and hopefully stop that whole pipeline to the adult system in prison for a lot of our youth.
On the child welfare side, which is the other part of the court that I also administratively handle, promoting services for the families and the youth who can then reunify or get permanency if the reunification doesn't work with their parents or family. Figuring out what better things we can do helps promote that family and foster that youth but also cuts off that pipeline from child welfare to juvenile justice and then to the adult system because a high percentage of our foster youth go into the juvenile justice system and then eventually go into the adult side.
It all starts here at Juvenile Court and the most important work is here. Fortunately, our standards do allow us to understand that's what we need to do. As judges here, we can help promote and engage the community to try and figure out what better practices we can come up with. I've enjoyed my time doing the JPJ position here in Juvenile Court.
That would mean that you're convening various stakeholders in a much more broad mission than a particular case.
We have social services agency, a healthcare agency, the Department of Education, the Public Defender’s Office, the DA's office and all of our community-based providers. We all regularly convene to talk about what ways can we improve? What additional specialty collaborative ports can we develop because we're seeing a growing need? I'm fortunate to work with such a great group of stakeholders regularly that we're all in line with that idea of, “If we can do better, let's do better.” It's going to improve a lot of our outcomes hopefully.
I was going to ask about the interrelationship with the collaborative courts as well because that approach of we're all shoulder to shoulder, try to improve things and move lives forward is very similar to the attitude that the collaborative courts foster. It's good to have that as an outlet for your work as well.
Our Juvenile Courts are all established on that platform. We were the original collaborative ports and then we have specialty collaborative courts in our Juvenile Court here that have specific goals. One is to help human trafficking victims. The other one is to help or assist our juvenile recovery court program, which is a substance use equivalent to the adult drug court programs that we have on the criminal side. Various specialty collaborative courts that we have are all fashioned to hopefully help identify and give more intensive services to the population that we find is most in need.
You build the community with 1 person and 1 family at a time through that. It's important to work and give them every opportunity to not show up again in another part of the court system. Do you have a particular judge either that you've worked with or otherwise that you admire or there are certain aspects of judges that you've seen that you're like, “I liked the way that judge does this?”
I have three judges that I've always liked when folks ask me this question. Two of them were judges when I was a public defender. The other one I worked with but was a former colleague with me at the Public Defender’s Office. He's on the Juvenile Court panel. One of them is Judge Makino in Orange County, who's retired. I used to appear in his courtroom regularly. There were a lot of great aspects about him but there was one thing that I took from him where I said, “If I'm ever a judge, I'm going to try my best to do this.”
If it's what you want, then you do it right.
That is that he's very consistent. He never favored one side or the other. I hate to say it but we've all been courts where sometimes you get the sense that might be something that's underlying but you never got that sense from him. He always knew what to expect. He would call his calendar at a regular time. If you got there, he would treat you like anybody else.
The other person is Judge Maria Hernandez. She's our assistant presiding judge. She was not only a colleague of mine at the Public Defender’s Office but when she took the bench, I appeared in front of her in Juvenile Court. She always took the time to listen to both sides. She would give everybody their opportunity to be heard. I always told myself, “If I'm going to ever get there, among her other ones but that is a definite trait that I'm going to take with me and be mindful of.” I appreciated the fact that she always took the time and listened to both sides. She acknowledged everybody and, as a litigant, made you feel like, “She at least didn't rule in my favor but she at least heard me.”
The third judge that I still admire is Judge Lewis Clapp at Juvenile Court. He is a team player and always willing to help one of our other bench officers. If they need help covering something, he's always stepping up to do that. He works hard and is very dedicated. Those are the good qualities that if I could ever be mindful of anything, those are the things I'm going to be mindful of. I'm going to be a hard worker, treat people fairly and be consistent. I try to live with those three judges in my mind.
Add a little something special that's just yours as well. We all do. We all bring ourselves to the job and there's only one of us. There's something else in there. You're too humble to say that. Those are good qualities, especially in the trial courts. Those are important. To have each other's back on your colleagues back on the bench, to have the litigants and the lawyers know that they were heard, even if you don't agree with their results and being fair. Those are good aspirational things. It's good to have role models that you exemplified so you could see what that looked like, “Here's one way that looks.” For a little lightning round question, which talent would you most like to have?
Anybody who's riding in my car with me will say, I need to be a good singer. I wish I was a good singer. I wish I could sing.
Was it the car karaoke?
I don't think I would ever be invited out to do that.
Who are your favorite writers or what is your favorite word?
I don't have any favorite writers because I find myself pursuing a lot of different works. I'm going to go with my favorite word, appreciate.
Who is your hero in real life?
My mom. My dad is second.
For what in life do you feel most grateful?
Family and good friends.
Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you want as a dinner guest?
Michelle Obama. Bono from U2 would be a close second.
Would he sing?
If I got my first wish granted and that is what talent I can have, that would be it. That would be very cool.
What is your motto?
This is a motto that I try to live by and it is, “Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take but by the number of moments that take your breath away.” That’s something I've always kept with me.
Thank you so much for sharing that, your story and advice for those considering the bench. You're such a warm-hearted person that I came across. I appreciate you doing this and sharing your story with others. Thanks so much for joining.
Thanks. It helps to have a great interviewer.
I so admire you. You're such a great person. To see you blossom in the role and contribute as you have is wonderful. It's wonderful for us here in Orange County.
Thank you.