DAVIS, Calif. — On a bench that will soon see a changing of the guard, Ryan Davis is asking voters in Yolo County to entrust him with a position that he believes he has long prepared to hold.
The seat, currently held by Janene Beronio, has opened what should be a closely watched contest between Davis, a longtime public defender and current court commissioner, and Diane Ortiz, a deputy district attorney whose candidacy the Vanguard profiled earlier this week.
For Davis, the campaign is more continuation of what he has been doing as Sacramento Court Commissioner than a change.
“Well, I’m running because I’ve been committed to public service throughout my career,” Davis said in a Vanguard interview, describing a legal path that began in criminal defense and has since expanded to civil litigation and judicial service.
Much of his early career was spent as a public defender, primarily in post-conviction proceedings and death penalty cases. But several years ago, he said, he made a deliberate decision to broaden his qualifications in anticipation of seeking a judgeship.
“I decided that I thought I would make a good judge and that would be a good way for me to serve my community,” he said, explaining that he moved to the Attorney General’s Office to gain civil litigation experience before becoming a court commissioner in Sacramento.
Today, he presides over a family law calendar, effectively performing the day-to-day work of a trial court judge.
“I love the work,” Davis said. “What I thought would be true has turned out to be true, which is that I’m well suited for it and I like it, and I do think it’s the right role for me.”
He added, “The goal for me is just to do it in the service of my home community. And that’s Yolo.”
Davis’s connection to the county is both professional and deeply personal. A resident since 1986, he attended Davis public schools from kindergarten through high school. His father was a UC Davis professor in plant pathology; his mother and stepmother were longtime educators.
His brother, Matt Davis, currently serves as Undersheriff in Yolo County.
“I mean, this was a great place to grow up. I love this community and never really entirely left,” he said.
After college in Oregon, he returned, married a fellow Yolo County native and is now raising two children in local schools. The roots, he said, are not incidental.
“Service to this particular community has always been important to me because again, it’s home,” he said.
Before entering the judiciary, Davis immersed himself in civic life. He served on the Davis Schools Foundation, eventually becoming president of its board, and was a member of the city’s Human Relations Commission.
He also volunteered as a citizen panelist in the District Attorney’s Neighborhood Court program, a restorative justice initiative aimed at addressing low-level offenses outside the traditional courtroom.
Public service, he said, has never been confined to one side of the bar.
His interest in the law began with abstract questions about justice and punishment. As a high school senior and later a philosophy student in college, Davis said he became fascinated by “questions around punishment and what counts as a good reason to punish and what sort of punishment is appropriate and what constitutes an appropriate reason to punish in terms of deterrence, retribution, et cetera.”
He once considered an academic career devoted to writing about those issues. Instead, he chose law school with a specific goal: becoming a public defender.
“I went to law school with a specific goal in mind of doing criminal law,” he said.
The work, particularly in capital cases, was demanding.
“It was sometimes hard but interesting and challenging in the right sort of ways, and it was meaningful work,” he said.
For Davis, the meaning lay not only in individual representation but in constitutional principle.
“In defending their client’s rights, what public defenders are also doing is really defending all of our rights,” he said.
Public defenders are often asked how they can represent people accused of serious crimes. Davis rejects the premise.
“Innocence is not always the issue in the case,” he said.
“It is to make the best arguments you can make so that the other side can make the best arguments they can make, and a judge can make a fair decision consistent with the law,” he said, describing the adversarial system as one designed to produce lawful outcomes rather than moral judgments by counsel.
That philosophy is likely to come under scrutiny in a county where law-and-order politics can surface in judicial races. California’s death penalty remains on the books, though under a gubernatorial moratorium, and Davis has handled numerous post-conviction capital cases.
Asked whether his background would hinder his ability to preside over a death penalty trial, Davis was unequivocal.
“The death penalty is a punishment under the law authorized in California,” he said. “And so I would not be unable to preside over such a case fairly, all the decisions I would make would be consistent with the law.”
He emphasized that lawyers often represent one side of a dispute, but judges must set that aside.
“That doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of being neutral, or one hopes,” he said. “And certainly I am confident that I can be and that I am neutral as a judicial officer now. And if I didn’t think I could do that, I wouldn’t run for judge.”
In contrast, Ortiz’s prosecutorial background reflects a different professional vantage point. Together, the two candidacies highlight an enduring debate over what kinds of legal experience best prepare someone for the bench.
Davis argues that diversity of background is itself an asset.
“I too really value diversity on the bench,” he said, noting that Yolo County, like much of California, has made strides in increasing representation of women and people of color in recent years.
But he also pointed to professional diversity.
“Yolo County doesn’t have a judge with the experience of being a public defender,” he said, suggesting that his background would add a perspective currently absent from the court.
Importantly, he added, that perspective does not imply favoritism.
“As a former public defender, it’s not that I’m going to favor the defense,” he said, just as a judge with a prosecutorial background would not be expected to favor law enforcement.
Davis’s current assignment in family law has shaped his understanding of the bench’s daily pressures. Family law calendars are often crowded, emotionally charged and procedurally complex.
“I’ve been doing it and I’ve been doing it well,” he said, describing an environment that requires efficiency, patience and composure.
He acknowledged that judicial work inevitably disappoints someone.
“You just have to fight against that bad feeling that you get when you’re letting someone down because you’re ruling against them,” he said.
The best outcome, he suggested, is not universal satisfaction but procedural fairness.
“The goal is best case scenario, when people leave the courtroom, leave my courtroom, whether they’ve won or lost, they at least feel like they’ve been heard, had the opportunity to present their case and that I followed the law,” he said.
On questions that often arise in criminal court — bail, jury composition and racial disparities — Davis repeatedly returned to institutional roles.
“Public safety is paramount,” he said when asked about bail decisions, while also noting that courts may not set bail in ways that discriminate based on wealth.
With regard to jury diversity and incarceration disparities, he described most solutions as legislative rather than judicial.
“I think what the court can do and needs to do and is obligated to do is to ensure that it’s jury services. Outreach is as extensive as it can be,” he said.
And more broadly, he said, “The judge’s role is to follow the law.”
That refrain — follow the law — echoes throughout his candidacy, a deliberate signal that, despite a career spent defending those charged with crimes, he sees the judicial function as fundamentally different.
As Yolo County voters weigh the credentials of Davis and Ortiz in the race to replace Judge Beronio, they are choosing not only between two individuals, but between two professional narratives about justice: one rooted in prosecution, the other in defense, both now seeking neutrality.
Davis is clear about what he believes he brings to that balance.
“I now have civil litigation experience,” he said. “And I want to emphasize that in large part because it’s just obviously not the case that all judges do is criminal law.”
Judges in Yolo County rotate through assignments, he noted, requiring versatility across legal domains and familiarity with multiple areas of the law.
“I’m ready to be in a civil law assignment. I’m ready to be in a family law assignment, and I’m ready to be in a criminal law assignment,” he said.
Davis said his experience across criminal defense, civil litigation and family law has prepared him for the rotating assignment structure of the Yolo County Superior Court, where judges handle criminal, civil and family matters over time.
Voters will decide the race between Davis and Diane Ortiz in the upcoming election to fill the seat being vacated by Janene Beronio.
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