Deidre Adams and Rosalina Nunez, Candidate for Fresno County Judge

Seven seats are open on the Fresno County Superior Court bench this June — the largest judicial shakeup in recent memory for a system that touches almost every resident, usually on their worst day. Jordan sits down with two of the candidates running for Seat 6: Rosalina Nunez, a 16-year family and civil attorney whose path into law began as a second-grader in immigration court during the Reagan amnesty era, and Deidre Adams, a deputy public defender on Fresno County's Major Crimes team who decided to become a lawyer at age nine, after reading the police report of her father's death.

The conversation moves past campaign talking points and into the texture of the job itself: what trial judges actually do versus what television depicts, the role of empathy in sentencing, Prop 36 and the mental health placement crunch, the flagging of Fresno County's care courts, the bumpy eCourt rollout, the quiet interpreter crisis hitting smaller language communities, AI-generated case law showing up in real motions, and the philosophical tension between rehabilitation and accountability when someone has failed treatment more than once. Both candidates weigh in on pretrial detention, juvenile sentencing, court backlogs, and why representation on the bench matters in a county as diverse as Fresno.

Plus: the best tater tots in downtown Fresno, Deidre's systematic march through every meal of the day, and book recommendations from Bruce Springsteen to Ketanji Brown Jackson to The Alchemist.

Election Day is June 2nd. The judge races sit at the very bottom of the ballot.

Books recommended: 

Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen

Lovely One: A Memoir by Ketanji Brown Jackson

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho