Tag: Public Defender Jeff Adachi

The Supreme Court ordered California to release 33,000 prisoners due to unhealthy conditions and prison overcrowding in the Plata vs. Brown prisoner lawsuit. The high court showed it was serious by demanding the release of 10,000 of these prisoners by a December 2011 deadline.

On the corner of Third and Revere, where the Bayview Library used to be, nothing is left but bare ground. One of the few places in the neighborhood where youngsters felt safe and enriched and everyone was welcome is gone. If the City had allowed the low bidder to build the new library, it would have been at least halfway to completion by now. The youngsters who love the library would be watching their parents and older brothers and sisters build a beautiful new library for them to return to in a matter of months. Liberty Builders, my general contracting company, was that low bidder.

A San Francisco police officer accused of stealing items from a man’s residential hotel room following a drug arrest has been captured on video in a second incident, appearing to leave a residence at the Julian Hotel with property never booked into evidence.

San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi announced that surveillance videos from the Henry Hotel reveal that San Francisco Police Department narcotics officers falsified police reports in order to justify searching residences without warrants or consent at the low-income residential hotel.

Matt Gonzalez, a longtime civil rights and criminal defense attorney and former Board of Supervisors president, was appointed Feb. 22 as chief attorney of the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office. In 2010, San Francisco public defenders won 48 percent of their trials for their clients.

BMAGIC’s 5th Annual Winter Ball on Friday, Dec. 18, at the Joseph Lee Recreational Center, 1395 Mendell St., San Francisco, is the event that youth in Bayview Hunters Point have been waiting for. All youth ages 14-18 in Bayview Hunters Point are invitedto celebrate the end of the year and take pride as their accomplishments are recognized and honored. Free admission to the formal includes DJ and dancing, dinner and professional photos. Teens who show up in street clothes will change into formal wear and keep the clothes they select.

As San Francisco grapples with a looming budget crisis, Public Defender Jeff Adachi is seeking $2 million in state reimbursement to the City for its defense of eight men charged in a 1971 homicide case involving a police officer. The city’s right to reimbursement is based on the fact that the California Attorney General took on the 36-year-old case after the San Francisco District Attorney’s office declined to prosecute.

The Clean Slate Program, one of San Francisco’s first reentry programs, was started by Public Defender Jeff Adachi in 1999. Over the past 10 years, Clean Slate has helped thousands of individuals overcome barriers to obtaining employment, housing, professional licenses, certifications and government aid.

The Public Defender’s Office will be forced to lay off seven attorneys and five staff members and eliminate the BMAGIC and Mo’ MAGIC programs if $1.6 million is cut from the office’s budget, as proposed by Mayor Gavin Newsom. Show the Board of Supervisors your support for the Public Defender’s Office on Tuesday, July 21, 2 p.m., City Hall Room 250. Give them a call today.

The first study to assess the impact of the San Francisco Public Defender's Office reentry social work program found that alternatives to incarceration, reduced sentencing and avoided jail days obtained as a result of reentry advocacy saved California state prisons over $5,000,000 and San Francisco County over $1,000,000.

The U.S. Constitution requires that an accused person who lacks the means to hire a lawyer is provided one. Yet budget cuts are forcing public defenders to turn away defendants who have no other legal recourse.

On Sept. 18, at the Civic Center Courthouse, two judges presided over hearings to determine if gang injunctions proposed earlier this summer by City Attorney Dennis Herrera would go into effect. The injunctions target two communities of color – the Mission and Fillmore districts – where, according to city officials, gang activity has created such a public nuisance that implementing injunctions has become necessary to restore the peace.

When Daniel Landry attended the City Attorney’s latest gang injunction press conference on June 21, little did he know how it would turn out. As a local who grew up in the Fillmore (aka Western Addition), Landry wanted to ensure that some community representation took place. “Someone needed to be there to give it some balance,” said Landry. “When the gang injunction came down on Oakdale, I wasn’t able to be there. This time I wanted to be way ahead in terms of addressing the issue.”