Every year, we honor the dedication, innovation, and impact of members within our community. Recognizing the outstanding work of our members through awards is more than just a celebration for an individual or a project—it's a way to highlight the dedication, passion, and impact that defines our work. By honoring excellence among our peers, we are doing more than honoring individual contributions. We also hope to inspire and encourage one another to continue this critical work. 

The Defender of the Year Award was established to recognize a defender or defenders who, in the opinion of other defenders, deserve special recognition for their work in criminal defense practice. In some cases, this is due to a particular effort in a case, while in other cases it is for an entire body of work.

The Defender Program of the Year Award was established to recognize defender offices that have developed special programs that serve as examples of important services for clients and staff. Past recipients include the:

• Contra Costa County Public Defender’s Office Early Representation Program
• Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office Second-Chance Women’s Reentry Court Program
• San Bernardino County’s Self-Sufficient, Well-Being, In-House, Mental Health Services Program (Everyone SWIMS)
• Alameda County Public Defender’s Office VOICE program – Voting Outreach Increases Community Empowerment
• San Diego County Public Defender’s Office Defense Transition Unit
• Alameda, Los Angeles, and Yolo County Public Defender’s Offices for their participation in the Partners for Justice Program
• Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office’s Neurocognitive Disorders Team; and
• Marin County Public Defender’s Office DMV Liaison Program.

Champion of Justice Award. This award goes to an individual whose work has had a statewide impact on the lives of our clients.

Past recipients include Assemblymember Ash Kalra, Senator Nancy Skinner, former Assemblymember and now Secretary of State Dr. Shirley Weber, CPDA Legislative Co-Chair Margo George; CPDA Legislative Committee Member Nick Stewart-Oaten, and Assemblymember Reginald Jones Sawyer, Sr.

In 2022 the award was awarded posthumously to Gabriel Caswell (1976-2021), a former deputy public defender and consultant to the Senate and Assembly Public Safety Committees. Gabriel worked tirelessly behind the scenes on hundreds of bills to constrain the system of mass incarceration and provide oversight to law enforcement. Bills that Gabriel worked on included those that ended the old felony murder rule in California and opened law enforcement records of misconduct.

Special Recognition Award. This award was established to recognize members of the association and defender community in categories that may not necessarily occur annually, such as lifetime achievement in particular fields of criminal defense, retirements, and contributions to the defense community not otherwise noted above.

The Gideon Award was established to recognize members of the press, electronic media, and entertainment industry who have through their work, helped make the complex criminal justice system more understandable and have helped educate the public on the rights of criminal defendants, the role of defense attorneys in protecting the rights of their clients and the rights of all, and the injustices in our system.

Past recipients of the Gideon Media Award include:

• Dawn Porter,  Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez for the film Gideon's Army
• R. Scott Moxley for reporting on the jailhouse informant abuses uncovered in Orange County
• Ava DuVernay for the film “13th”
• Daisy Vieyra and Stephanie Ong, Co-Chairs of the SB 10 Bail Reform Media Committee
• Raj Jayadev of Silicon Valley De-Bug, Inc.
• Lynn Novic for the film “Ken Burns Presents College Behind-Bars
• Open Vallejo, for their work reporting on police misconduct and killings in Vallejo, California
• Jeffery Robinson, writer of the film “Who We Are”
• Ali Winston and Darwin BondGraham, for their book, “The Riders Come out at Night: Brutality, Corruption, and Cover-up in Oakland.” 

The Rose Elizabeth Bird Award. Established in the Year 2000 in memory of the Honorable Rose Elizabeth Bird (1936-1999), Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, the “Rose Elizabeth Bird Award” was established to recognize members of the judiciary who have dedicated their lives to ensuring that, regardless of any outside pressures that may come their way, their performance on the bench is guided only by the the rule of law.

These courageous and outstanding individuals are those who help to protect and preserve the goals and ideals of our American justice system at the judicial level, where all people, rich or poor, uneducated or showered with letters and college degrees, articulate or unable to speak for themselves, are all entitled, as a fundamental right, to be treated equally under the law in our courts. Rose Elizabeth Bird was precisely that kind of jurist.