Ogden • After Jennifer Valencia became the latest judge appointed to the 2nd District Court in August, the Ogden courthouse was abuzz.
Judge Ernie Jones remembers a bailiff asking him, “Hey Judge, have you met the new judge?”
“Yeah, I think I have,” Jones recalled telling the bailiff.
What he didn’t say: Not only did he know Judge Valencia — he also is her dad.
Valencia and Jones might be Utah’s first father and daughter to serve as judges at the same time, much less in the same courthouse.
It’s a moment years in the making, which started when Valencia was a child. At 10 years old, she would go to court with her mother and watch Jones at work as a prosecutor with the Salt Lake County district attorney’s office.
She loved watching lawyers argue in court, Valencia recalled in a recent interview with The Salt Lake Tribune. She loved watching the process and the rules.
And she loved watching her dad.
“I knew I liked being in a courtroom,” she said. “ ... When you’re young, I think everyone looks up to their fathers and kind of views their father as a protector.”
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Second District Judge Ernie Jones has been on the bench since 2000. The newest judge appointment in the courthouse is his own daughter, Judge Jennifer Valencia. They may be the first father/daughter to serve as judges in Utah at the same time, much less in the same courthouse.
Years went by, and Valencia went to law school and pursued her life goal of becoming a prosecutor. Jones, meanwhile, was appointed to the bench in the 2nd District Court in 2000.
Valencia did become a prosecutor — first at the Utah attorney general’s office, then at the Salt Lake County district attorney’s office. In 2013, she went a different direction and became the director of the Utah Sentencing Commission.
Part of her job there included talking with candidates who wanted to become judges. It got her thinking about what makes a good judge, and she recalled talking with Jones about what she had learned in that process.
He asked, “Why would you think that you can’t be a judge?”
There was a long moment of silence.
“I didn’t really have a great answer,” Valencia said. “It definitely got me thinking, not so much, ‘I can do that,’ but ‘I want to be that contributing factor in our courts.’ I have the education, the experience and information that I think would be valuable to the bench.”
Once Valencia decided to seek the opening left when Judge Scott Hadley retired earlier this year, Jones said he thought it was a great idea for his daughter to apply.
“Jennifer has the temperament,” he told The Tribune. “She’s smart enough to know what she’s doing. I thought it would be a good deal. My biggest worry is that she would come back and say, ‘What have you gotten me into, Dad? What have you done to me?’ ”
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Second District Judge Ernie Jones has been on the bench since 2000. The newest judge appointment in the courthouse is his own daughter, Judge Jennifer Valencia. They may be the first father/daughter to serve as judges in Utah at the same time, much less in the same courthouse.
Jones said he also liked the idea of having more diversity on the bench — Valencia is the only woman currently serving as a 2nd District judge.
“You look in Salt Lake and there’s lots of women judges,” Jones said. “Up here, you go north of Bountiful, and Jennifer’s it. I just think it’s a good idea to have some diversity.”
Jones has been on the bench now for 17 years; Valencia just a few months. The father said the biggest challenge he’s faced as a judge is sentencing.
There are those cases, the ones he calls “tsunamis,” that he wrestles with and thinks about even after he’s left the courthouse for the day. He feels the weight of his decision, he said, knowing that his sentence will not only affect a defendant, but also his or her family.
“To me, sentencing is all about trying to get somebody’s attention,” he said. “Sometimes you do, you figure out, ‘I’ll never see this guy or girl again, they’ve learned their lesson.’ Others, it just bounces off. You know they’ll be back.”
Valencia said she thought day and night about sentencing before she was appointed. The biggest challenge for her so far is finding the time to have meaningful interactions with defendants on a day when she has a calendar of 10 people who need to be sentenced and another 60 cases waiting to be addressed.
The most rewarding part for the new judge?
“My kids seeing me in the robes,” she said. “Putting on the robe, being on the bench, all that still feels very surreal to me. So my kids seeing me as a judge — especially my daughter — that look that I got from them, [it’s] a kind of added level of respect. For me, personally, it’s a big deal.”
Valencia and Jones see each other almost daily now, their courtrooms are a floor apart. And, of course, they still get together on the weekends to watch ballgames or have family dinners.
As her family parted from her parents at a recent gathering, Jones told his daughter, “See you tomorrow, Jen.”
Her son piped up: “That’s just the cutest thing ever, Mom.”
