Biography
Reuben Moreno is the Supervising Attorney for the Juvenile Division of the Sacramento County Public Defender’s Office. He has dedicated nearly the entirety of his 20-year career in that office to the defense of children. He has tried hundreds of juvenile delinquency cases at all levels of complexity and has served as a Juvenile Trial Attorney, Fitness/Transfer Attorney, Placement Attorney, Non-Minor Dependent Attorney, Juvenile Drug Court Attorney, Division of Juvenile Justice Resource Attorney, Juvenile Writs and Appeals, and the Lead Attorney of the Juvenile Division.
Reuben has litigated many cases in the CA 3rd District Court of Appeals, resulting in several published cases concerning juvenile delinquency. He has spoken at local, statewide and national forums to both defense practitioners and judges on juvenile delinquency related topics including a presentation on Holistic Juvenile Defense Practices to The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges earlier this year. He has served on several workgroups with the Pacific Juvenile Defender Center in the past and is a current Board member on the National Advisory Board for the Western Region of the Gault Center.
Reuben was responsible for creating the SB395/SB203 Juvenile Miranda Advisement Program in Sacramento County, ensuring that attorneys are available 24/7, 365 days a year to go into the field and provide Miranda advisements to children prior to a custodial interrogation. He also helped to create the Juvenile Trauma Response Court (JTRC). JTRC centers on the trauma that children suffer, which in turn results in the behaviors that then bring them before the juvenile court. Starting off as a grant funded pilot program, Sacramento County now fully funds JTRC due to its success.
Two years ago, Reuben was given his dream job of supervising the Juvenile Division of the Public Defender’s Office. Since then, his focus has been on getting resources for the defense of children by expanding the Juvenile Division to include more attorneys, social workers and support staff. The Juvenile Division now has its first ever dedicated Juvenile Research Attorney, and attorneys dedicated specifically to Transfer hearings and Secure Track litigation and advocacy. He also worked with others in his office to secure grant funding in order to start the Juvenile Pre-Trial Program (JPTP) which funds a pre-adjudication services team based within the Office of the Public Defender. This team works together to make early intervention connection to services within individualized areas of need for clients at the detention hearing stage. The goal of JPTP is to get more children out of custody earlier, have children placed on lower levels of probation and spend less time overall on probation.
