Critics point to Boudin\u2019s ideology and soft-on-crime approach, but colleagues say San Francisco\u2019s top cop isn\u2019t qualified for the job<\/p>\n\n\n\n
by Susan Dyer Reynolds JUNE 2021 (marinetimes.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On January 9, 2015, four men were shot and killed inside a car in the Lower Haight near Laguna and Page streets. Police eventually arrested Lee Farley Jr. for the killings and were investigating several other suspects. Six years later, the case hasn\u2019t gone to trial, and those other suspects have all died as a result of gang-related violence. The case languished under former San Francisco District Attorney George Gasc\u00f3n, and it continues to languish under his successor, Chesa Boudin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Farley\u2019s attorney, Peter Fitzpatrick, told KTVU\u2019s Evan Sernoffsky the district attorney\u2019s office shares some responsibility for dragging things out \u2014 there have been three different prosecutors assigned to the case since Boudin took office. The current prosecutor has never tried a murder case. For his April 15 update on the killings, Sernoffsky looked at jail records and discovered that of the 814 inmates in jail 680 are unsentenced and awaiting trial. He also pointed to a report by the state judicial council, which shows San Francisco adjudicates just 43 percent of felony cases in under a year; statewide, almost 80 percent of cases are complete in that timeframe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On May 15, two men were killed and a third was wounded in separate, back-to-back shootings near Potrero Hill. Police later identified 32-year-old San Francisco resident Robert Newt as the suspect. A check of his record revealed Newt had been arrested just weeks earlier, on April 21, for charges including felon in possession of a firearm, felon in possession of a loaded firearm, felon in possession of a concealed firearm, person prohibited from owning or possessing a firearm, and possession of an assault weapon \u2014 an untraceable AR-15-style rifle with no serial number known as a \u201cghost gun.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since 2018, Newt has been arrested six times in various counties on numerous charges, nearly all involving firearms, but in the April 21 arrest Boudin declined to file charges, putting the onus back on police to obtain more evidence and setting Newt free. Boudin spokesperson Rachel Marshall told the San Francisco Chronicle <\/em>prosecutors wanted the police to obtain DNA or fingerprint evidence \u201cnecessary to prosecute the case.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n After reviewing the SFPD incident summary, former San Francisco prosecutor Tom Ostly said, \u201cI would charge on those facts 100 percent. Boudin\u2019s excuses are defense attorney arguments that are inconsistent with the law and facts.\u201d Ostly, who tried 31 cases under Gasc\u00f3n with a conviction rate of more than 90 percent, said Boudin could have kept Newt in custody. \u201cDNA is not necessary to charge Mr. Newt for being a felon in possession of a firearm, or any of the other crimes he was arrested for. DNA may be helpful in proving the charges beyond a reasonable doubt at jury trial, but it is not necessary for rebooking or preliminary hearing. The law says circumstantial and direct evidence are equal. The jury decides what the evidence shows, and cases are proven by circumstantial evidence all the time. Before video and DNA, cases were put in with circumstantial evidence, and new technology did not change the burden of proof. DNA on a moveable object is of limited evidentiary value \u2014 it was just an excuse not to charge it. Waiting to get DNA is not something any competent prosecutor would do. It is disturbing that the DA refuses to acknowledge the truth of his failure and instead is trying to gaslight the public and shift blame. It sends the clear message that incompetence will continue.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Ostly also pointed out that had Newt been charged correctly, he would have been eligible for a variety of services. \u201cSince he was not charged, none of those resources were made available to him, and his destructive behavior continued. The district attorney\u2019s incompetence has also failed Mr. Newt.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just days after the Potrero Hill shootings, Boudin told the Police Commission it wasn\u2019t his fault that Newt went free. \u201cProsecutors are forced to wait for up to six weeks to get results on critical forensic evidence tests.\u201d he said. \u201cAnd tragically that\u2019s what happened here. We asked for DNA, we never got it, and now we\u2019ve got two murders on our hands.\u201d But Boudin wasn\u2019t \u201cforced\u201d to wait six weeks for DNA \u2014 he gave SFPD until June 2 to obtain it, and in the interim Newt was released.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Boudin was blaming police in the Newt case, another incident involving a repeat offender hit the news. On May 24, a 22-year-old man named Christopher Cawthorne was shot and killed a block from Oakland police headquarters in broad daylight. Evidence technicians recovered 20 casings in multiple calibers, including rifle and handgun rounds. Cawthorne, a San Francisco resident, had been charged in the June 2020 murder of a 48-year-old mother named Deanna Rice, while on probation for carrying a loaded firearm. Boudin once again cited \u201clack of evidence\u201d and declined to charge Cawthorne. Less than four months later, Cawthorne was one of the suspects arrested in an \u201cassassination attempt\u201d on a group of men in a Visitacion Valley garage. Despite his outstanding murder charge in the Deanna Rice case, Boudin\u2019s office gave Cawthorne a plea deal and let him go. Now Cawthorne, too, is dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe was a mediocre and unethical defense lawyer. As a DA he is dangerous,\u201d said one former DA who tried cases against Boudin when he was a public defender. \u201cShootings were up 400 percent in February alone. This is a good example of Boudin lying about crime. He left shootings out of his stats \u2014 and look at the consequence of not dealing with those shootings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gregory Mendez, a 20-year veteran assistant attorney who retired this past December, sees Boudin\u2019s lack of management experience and leadership skills as a big part of the problem. Mendez says under Boudin the DA\u2019s office has a backlog of cases and a staff of former public defenders \u2014 like Boudin himself. \u201cConceptually, Boudin and the other 15 public defenders being paid as DAs have one principal goal, and that is to do what they can for the accused. When they joined the DA\u2019s office they didn\u2019t say \u2018Now I want to prosecute these people.\u2019 None of them \u2014 including Boudin \u2014 has ever prosecuted a case. It was bad under Gasc\u00f3n, but Boudin came in and made it worse; the lowest morale I\u2019ve seen, people leaving, no one to try cases. It\u2019s complete chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a letter supporting the efforts to recall Boudin, Mendez says, \u201cSuperior Court judges presiding over plea negotiations have been rejecting DA offers because they are too lenient, and if accepted, would not hold defendants legally responsible. . .\u201d Mendez also notes Boudin\u2019s misuse of Collaborative Court units, which offer the accused clinical treatment rather than plea deals, trials, and potential jail time. \u201cInstead of following long-established guidelines for determining who should participate in these alternative courts, Boudin refers any and all to these forums and provides those accused of any crime, no matter how violent, the opportunity to sidestep accountability under the auspices of putative recovery.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n In a city where fentanyl-laced drugs are on track to kill 1,000 people this year, Boudin hasn\u2019t pursued a single felony drug dealing case. According to Public Comment SF<\/em>, suspects booked in 2020 were released the same day or the next day 84 percent of the time. Mendez says Boudin prefers to send dealers to drug court, which is meant for users. \u201cThey sit right next to their customers.\u201d Mendez says. \u201cThe judge will send dealers to counseling, they don\u2019t show up, and bench warrants are flying around all the time. . .\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another DA, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, says when Boudin fired most of the experienced prosecutors early in his term, many of the public defenders he replaced them with were put in policy making positions. \u201cThey\u2019re getting close to $200K a year for doing nothing but cheerleading for him. He hasn\u2019t even kept his biggest campaign promise of holding bad cops accountable. He likes to say he prosecutes bad cops, but he hasn\u2019t prosecuted a single one.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n In March of 2020, Boudin dismissed charges against two Alameda County sheriff\u2019s deputies who beat car theft suspect Stanislav Petrov so badly they broke bones in his hands and arms \u2014 and it was all caught on surveillance video. Oakland attorney Julia Sherwin, who represented Petrov in a 2016 civil rights lawsuit against Alameda County and won a $5.5 million settlement, told the Chronicle<\/em> \u201cshe was stunned\u201d when she learned of Boudin\u2019s dismissal. \u201cThis is about as much a slam dunk of a criminal case against law enforcement as you would hope to find,\u201d she said. In November 2020 Boudin promised to refile charges against the deputies, yet eight months later he hasn\u2019t done so. (Editor\u2019s note: the day this column went to print, Boudin refiled the case.<\/em>) <\/p>\n\n\n\n He blames the pandemic, but colleagues say the real reason is he lacks qualified attorneys. \u201cThe case got dismissed because Xochtil Carrion was assigned after Swart was fired; she was completely unprepared and in over her head,\u201d said someone familiar with the case. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Under pressure from late public defender Jeff Adachi, in 2018 Gasc\u00f3n assigned the Alameda County sheriff\u2019s deputies case to top prosecutors Michael Swart and David Ezgar. When Gasc\u00f3n left to run for district attorney of Los Angeles, Boudin entered the race on a platform of holding cops accountable and won. He immediately fired seven attorneys, including Swart. That left Ezgar on the case, but he resigned shortly after. A confidential memo obtained by the Marina Times<\/em> shows Boudin replaced those seasoned prosecutors with former interns, recent law grads, public defenders, and private defense attorneys. \u201cThe people he has hired are not litigators. I know this because they\u2019re the reason I had a 90 percent conviction rate,\u201d says Ostly, who was one of the seasoned prosecutors Boudin fired. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t have enough people on staff that know how to put a case together and a trial in; he fired or drove them out. Even if a case is a slam dunk, you need a lawyer that at least knows the basics.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Boudin\u2019s poor hiring decisions also play a part in why the 2015 Lower Haight killings and other murder cases have been continued, had multiple DAs, or resulted in plea deals. While the prosecutors he fired had tried more than 100 homicides between them, the new hire memo reveals only one person with \u201chomicide\u201d in their resume. She joined Boudin\u2019s staff from the New York District Attorney\u2019s Office, where \u201cshe was most recently promoted to Homicide Cadet as an entry position into homicide prosecutions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Boudin blames the pandemic for a lack of jury trials, but he should be thankful it gave him more than a year\u2019s worth of excuses. He also touts lower crimes of opportunity, when credit really goes to the pandemic and Mayor London Breed\u2019s stay-at-home orders. As tourists return and residents get back to their daily lives, those crimes of opportunity are already on the rise. With courts ramping back up to full capacity and hundreds of cases looming, Boudin\u2019s lack of experience, hiring mistakes, and inability to lead will be on full display \u2014 and he has no one to blame but himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n E-mail: susan@marinatimes.com<\/a>. Follow Susan and the<\/em> Marina Times on Twitter: @SusanDReynolds and @TheMarinaTimes.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n AND REBUTTAL FROM SF BERNIECRATS:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Critics point to Boudin\u2019s ideology and soft-on-crime approach, but colleagues say San Francisco\u2019s top cop isn\u2019t qualified for the job by Susan Dyer Reynolds JUNE 2021 (marinetimes.com) On January 9, 2015, four men were shot and killed inside a car in the Lower Haight near Laguna and Page streets. Police… Continue reading THE BLAME GAME<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\u2018COMPLETE CHAOS\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
COPPING OUT<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n