Jenkins: San Francisco Superior Court Is ‘Complicit’ in ‘Dereliction of Duty’

After San Francisco Superior Court officials announced Tuesday that they would release some defendants from pre-trial custody who don’t have an attorney to represent them, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins lashed out at the county’s judges for being “complicit” in what she called the public defender’s office’s “dereliction of duty.”

“What is new is that the court has become complicit in this by now stating that they are going to release potentially dangerous and violent felons back into the community because of what’s happening,” Jenkins told KQED.

“The court has the power to appoint the public defender, whether or not they are saying they don’t have the capacity.”

Court officials have said they’re “facing an unprecedented number of misdemeanor cases, most of which must be brought to trial within 45 days.”

Since May, the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office has declared itself unavailable one day per week in misdemeanor and some felony cases, due to what the office calls excessive workloads and understaffing. The Bar Association of San Francisco provided private attorneys to represent those defendants, but their caseloads have now increased, and they have said they will no longer accept new appointments.

Jenkins said she believes the move is a tactic designed to extract more money for the office from city leaders, one that threatens to disrupt her office’s efforts to prosecute.

The district attorney came into office promising a stricter attitude toward prosecutions and plea deals than her former boss and predecessor, Chesa Boudin, who was recalled in 2022 amid shifting attitudes in San Francisco toward criminal justice reform. Jenkins has even floated the idea of charging fentanyl dealers with murder in drug-related deaths.

According to the city’s dashboard, she filed 8,000 cases in 2024, compared to about 5,600 in 2021 during Boudin’s last full year, though the rate of convictions and diversions remains proportionately similar.

But, as Jenkins pointed out, the numbers haven’t yet rebounded to the peaks seen before Boudin took office.

“That is not adding up,” Jenkins said. “They didn’t say in 2019, when the numbers were at their highest, that they were unable to manage their caseloads.”

Jenkins also accused the public defender’s office of mismanagement, such as double-staffing felony cases and intentionally avoiding plea deals to force misdemeanor cases to trial.

San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju rejected those accusations, noting that his office has consistently advocated for more resources over the years. He added that while he double-staffs certain felony cases, each lawyer still has numerous cases at any given time.

“It is my ethical and legal mandate to represent our clients in an effective way, and our defenders understand what that means,” Raju said. “We’ve had several attorneys who had to go out on some form of stress leave or medical issues … To have a caseload where several of your clients are looking at decades in prison or life sentences at one time is extremely, extremely difficult work.”

Raju said he’s optimistic that the Mayor’s office and Board of Supervisors will help create more parity between the two offices’ budgets — the District Attorney’s office receives more than $30,000,000 more.

“The district attorney’s office has sole discretion over what cases to file, and there’s been a nearly 60% increase in filing since 2021,” Raju said, “and that had some predictable results, filling our jails to over capacity and increasing our case loads to a breaking point.”

Raju pointed to a first-of-its-kind comprehensive national study on appropriate case workload for public defenders, which his office’s internal analysis used to determine that it needs 26 more attorneys. He said the office is now unavailable two days a week for misdemeanor cases, something that it’s regularly evaluating and may dial down.

“I’m hoping that the courts are not intimidated by these tactics,” said Raju, in reference to Jenkins’ comments.

The district attorney was reported to the State Bar by a former Superior Court Judge in April for alleged incendiary attacks against judges over their decisions.

“But what I’m concerned about,” Raju continued, “is being able to represent my clients in a constitutionally mandated way.” 

Robert Weisberg, co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, said the public defender’s office’s move is not uncommon when understaffed, and a similar thing happened during the tenure of a previous public defender, Jeff Adachi.

“An important thing is that it’s not just a question of the right to counsel [at] a trial, it’s the right to effective counsel under the Constitution,” Weisberg said.

He said the issue is often settled in some way, though the Court has the option to hold Raju’s office in contempt.