{"id":20350,"date":"2021-10-26T13:17:53","date_gmt":"2021-10-26T20:17:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=20350"},"modified":"2021-10-26T13:17:55","modified_gmt":"2021-10-26T20:17:55","slug":"why-a-progressive-prosecutor-just-left-d-a-chesa-boudins-office-and-joined-the-recall-effort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2021\/10\/26\/why-a-progressive-prosecutor-just-left-d-a-chesa-boudins-office-and-joined-the-recall-effort\/","title":{"rendered":"Why a progressive prosecutor just left D.A. Chesa Boudin’s office and joined the recall effort"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/a>Heather Knight<\/a> Oct. 24, 2021 (SFChronicle.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Brooke
1of3Brooke Jenkins is one of about 50 attorneys to leave the District Attorney\u2019s Office since Chesa Boudin took over last year.Lea Suzuki \/ The Chronicle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Xochitl<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Shirin<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sitting on a bench in Golden Gate Park on a recent afternoon, Brooke Jenkins made clear the city\u2019s raging debate over crime<\/a> and how District Attorney Chesa Boudin responds to it is more complicated than left versus right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenkins, a former homicide prosecutor, just quit. Her last day was Oct. 15. She\u2019s now one of about 50 attorneys \u2014 roughly a third of the office \u2014 to leave since January 2020, when Boudin took charge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Jenkins\u2019 decision to speak out about what she views as chaotic management, high turnover and ideologically driven decisions at the D.A.\u2019s office sets her apart in the normally tight-lipped criminal justice community. And so does her new role: volunteering for the campaign to recall her former boss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenkins, 40, is Black and Latina and \u2014 like Boudin \u2014 describes herself as a progressive prosecutor who has long sought alternatives to incarceration. She told me she agrees with the central tenet of Boudin\u2019s campaign: that the criminal justice system is racist and needs reform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But she disagrees with what she sees as Boudin prioritizing ideology and politics over the day-to-day handling of cases, which she said has yielded an unorganized office, plummeting morale and bad outcomes for victims and their families.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s important to note that this is personal for Jenkins. One of those families was her husband\u2019s \u2014 devastated by the slaying last year of his 18-year-old cousin and what the family views as an ineffective prosecution of his alleged killers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe D.A.\u2019s office now is a sinking ship,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s like the Titanic, and it\u2019s taking public safety along with it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since taking office 21 months ago, Boudin has become one of the most polarizing public figures in San Francisco \u2014 so much so that a recall of him is likely to qualify for the ballot<\/a> after the campaign filed 83,487 signatures Friday, 32,000 more than needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Up to this point, Boudin has been mostly criticized by residents concerned about crime and by the traditionally conservative police officers union. Less than two years into his tenure, he\u2019s been blamed unfairly for everything from Walgreens closures to long-rampant car break-ins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this is the first time critics inside his office \u2014 including Jenkins and two other newly resigned prosecutors \u2014 have come forward to take issue with his approach to specific cases and his management style. That may pose a significant challenge if the recall goes to voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview Friday, Boudin dismissed concerns about high turnover and low morale, saying many attorneys\u2019 offices and workplaces in general are struggling to retain employees as the country emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic. He said he had only four vacancies among 144 prosecutor jobs and is excited about his new hires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cObviously high levels of turnover can create short-term problems,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s great to have new energy and people who are excited about coming to work for the office and serving the city.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He told me he was surprised by Jenkins\u2019 decision to share her frustrations publicly and work for the campaign to recall him, because he promoted her to the homicide unit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUsually when you promote people, they think you have good judgment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supporters of Boudin say the turnover simply reflects growing pains and that reforming a broken criminal justice system is bound to upset some career prosecutors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whichever way you lean, people like Jenkins are worth paying attention to. As the most powerful law enforcement officials in San Francisco, Boudin warrants scrutiny \u2014 and the way he runs his office day to day, manages people and handles criminal cases couldn\u2019t be more germane to evaluating his job performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenkins and the two other prosecutors are just a sliver of the departures that include firings, retirements and resignations, though it\u2019s impossible to know all the reasons employees left. Last week alone, Lisa Ortiz and Edgar Zamudio, both in Victims Services, Sarah Orrick, a prosecutor in the domestic violence unit, and Maia Maszara, the lead human trafficking prosecutor, announced their resignations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other top prosecutors who\u2019ve left include Julia Cervantes, a manager in the general felonies division; Lili Nguyen, a homicide prosecutor; and Kathleen McBride, a sexual assault prosecutor. Diane Knoles, the head of the homicide unit, resigned last year to work for the Napa County District Attorney\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their exits leave some of the most important units staffed by people without much experience. No one still working in the homicide unit, for example, has ever secured a murder conviction in San Francisco, Jenkins said. Nearly half haven\u2019t tried a murder case, she said. The sexual assault unit is similarly staffed mostly by people without even a year of experience prosecuting sexual assault cases, she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boudin said the most important units are staffed by career prosecutors and he has \u201ctremendous confidence\u201d in his staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The office\u2019s stability came under fire last month when Superior Court Judge Bruce Chan<\/a> blasted Boudin in open court for high turnover and disorganization, saying he strongly disapproved \u201cof the manner in which the Office of the District Attorney is being managed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the same hearing, Martina Avalos, a public defender, accused prosecutors of routinely failing to hand over potentially exculpatory evidence to the defense in a timely matter. These kinds of errors are more likely, Jenkins said, when cases keep changing hands because frustrated lawyers keep quitting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One such mistake led to the dismissal of a 29-count indictment against three graffiti taggers who allegedly caused tens of thousands of dollars of damage to small businesses in Chinatown and elsewhere. The D.A.\u2019s office lost a binder containing case evidence and grand jury records, according to a prosecutor familiar with the case. (The Chronicle agreed not to identify the person, who was not authorized to discuss the case, in accordance with its anonymous sources policy<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boudin\u2019s supporters resist the argument that turnover is a problem and the office is chaotic. Lara Bazelon, a law professor at the University of San Francisco and a Boudin backer, said she\u2019s confident the office is well run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She noted the country is in its fifth year of a movement toward electing progressive prosecutors and that it\u2019s common for \u201cthe old guard\u201d to resign during a reform-minded district attorney\u2019s first term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re implementing new policies, which is what\u2019s happening in San Francisco, there\u2019s going to be friction,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s going to be some people who don\u2019t feel like that\u2019s what they signed up to do, but that\u2019s not the same thing as chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other Bay Area district attorneys haven\u2019t seen so many departures in their first years on the job. Contra Costa County\u2019s Diana Becton, also in the progressive mold, employs 104 prosecutors. Five left after she took office in 2017, and six more parted ways in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

San Mateo County D.A. Steve Wagstaffe, a more law-and-order prosecutor, employs 60 lawyers and said six departed in his first year and four in his second. He said four or five a year is typical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of San Francisco\u2019s recent departures is Xochitl Carrion, an out queer Latina who left the general felonies unit Tuesday after six years in the office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said cases changed hands so often because of high turnover that she worried about inheriting troubled cases: She might assume responsibility for previous mistakes and potentially even be disbarred. She\u2019s moving into a corporate counsel position for more support, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHigh turnover results in multiple attorneys working on a case where things can fall through the cracks, and the last prosecutor is left with the responsibility to make everything right,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s incredibly stressful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She also resented the notion that Boudin is introducing progressive policies to an ideologically old-fashioned office. She said San Francisco prosecutors have long focused on restorative justice and finding alternatives to incarceration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey have been on the front line advocating for our most vulnerable victims who are people of color, immigrants, LGBT+ folks and elders,\u201d Carrion continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shirin Oloumi left her job as a prosecutor<\/a> in the office in July, in part because she believes Boudin is biased toward defendants at the expense of victims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe priority first and foremost was public perception, and the second priority was incarcerated people,\u201d she said. \u201cIt made me really sad to think the victims of crime did not count among his priorities unless it helped public perception.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carrion and Oloumi described Jenkins as a rising star with talent, smarts and strong ethics. She grew up in Union City, graduating from the University of Chicago Law School in 2006. She worked in corporate law before losing her firstborn son, who she\u2019d named Justice, shortly after his premature birth in 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt really forced me to decide what was actually going to be meaningful to me to get up for every day,\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenkins, who was hired by George Gasc\u00f3n seven years ago, had squared off several times against Boudin when he was a public defender and praised him as \u201ca zealous advocate\u201d for his clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boudin came to her during the campaign for advice and reassured her he wouldn\u2019t reflexively fire prosecutors if he won.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he did fire six of the most experienced prosecutors<\/a> on his first day in office. When Jenkins returned from maternity leave in April 2020, Boudin promoted her to the homicide unit \u2014 and she said she felt acutely the loss of people she could have leaned on in her new role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boudin told me he promised he wouldn\u2019t do mass firings and said removing six people is normal for a newly elected official.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenkins\u2019 misgivings about her new boss intensified after her husband\u2019s cousin, Jerome Mallory,<\/a> 18, was fatally shot in the Bayview on July 5, 2020. According to Jenkins, Mallory was an innocent bystander in a gang dispute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Police arrested four people who had allegedly been in the same car and determined two of them had fired guns in a gang feud, but couldn\u2019t say which two had pulled the triggers. The D.A.\u2019s office declined to file charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boudin had announced after taking office that he would not seek gang-related sentencing enhancements except in \u201cextraordinary circumstances,\u201d saying the practice unfairly punished Black and Latino men because of the way some street gangs have been defined and targeted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenkins said Boudin is also resistant to filing felony charges of gang conspiracy. She wanted those charges filed against Mallory\u2019s alleged killers, seeing them as the only way for prosecutors to make a case. She said there are some cases in which the only way forward is to file gang charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After several months, the D.A.\u2019s office did charge all four men, and they\u2019re in custody, but not on gang charges. Jenkins said she doubts the case will hold up in court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said Boudin\u2019s blanket policy bothers her because he touts it as benefiting the Black and Latino communities when the victims of gang crimes are usually Black and Latino \u2014 like her husband\u2019s cousin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boudin told me he doesn\u2019t know much about the case because his trial integrity unit determined he had a conflict of interest and had to be firewalled from the matter. Jenkins said that decision came after the office released the four men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She also pointed to what she called an example of ideology trumping public safety. When the four people now charged with killing Mallory were out of custody shortly after his death, one of them, Sincere Pomar, allegedly injured a 13-year-old child in his care and, weeks later, allegedly committed attempted murder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boudin\u2019s office has charged him for those crimes as well, but Jenkins said they couldn\u2019t have happened if he had been held on Mallory\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, Jenkins said she thought she could continue working successfully in the office \u2014 until she took on a case prosecuting Daniel Gudino, 29, who allegedly killed his mother and mutilated her corpse on April 12, 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenkins recently secured a guilty verdict in court before the jury separately took up whether Gudino had been legally insane at the time of the killing, meaning he did not know right from wrong. Jenkins argued that the evidence showed Gudino, despite mental health struggles, understood what he was doing. The jury hung on that issue. Jenkins said she and the public defender agreed that rather than begin the trial from scratch, they\u2019d allow the judge in the case to decide the matter of insanity from the bench.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Jenkins said, an intermediary then informed her Boudin had agreed to the public defender\u2019s request to find Gudino insane without discussing the case with her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said when she worked for Gasc\u00f3n, he\u2019d meet with his prosecutors to discuss big decisions and \u201cthe facts of the case and the pros and cons to resolving the case a particular way.\u201d She said Boudin makes many decisions with no input.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe will intervene in cases unilaterally to enforce what he believes is right regardless of what his line attorneys feel or regardless of what the evidence suggests,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boudin, in our interview, said it was clear to him Gudino was insane at the time of the killing. Matt Gonzalez, chief attorney for the public defender\u2019s office, said Boudin had given Jenkins leeway to try the case in court and most D.A.s would have submitted to Gudino being insane from the start because it was so clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have the ultimate decision-making power,\u201d Boudin said. \u201cShe won her case. I was proud of her work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenkins emailed Boudin her resignation Oct. 1. She said he asked her to schedule an exit interview with him, but she never did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI simply believe he is wedded to his radical approach to prosecution and to criminal justice, and therefore me attempting to promote more balance would go unheard,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis,\u201d she continued, \u201cis my exit interview.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com<\/a> Twitter: @hknightsf<\/a>Fifth & Mission<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heather Knight is a columnist working out of City Hall and covering everything from politics to homelessness to family flight and the quirks of living in one of the most fascinating cities in the world. She believes in holding politicians accountable for their decisions or, often, lack thereof – and telling the stories of real people and their struggles.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

She co-hosts the Chronicle’s TotalSF podcast and co-founded its #TotalSF program to celebrate the wonder and whimsy of San Francisco.VIEW COMMENTSTop of the News<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"newspaper's<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"HEARST<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u00a92021 Hearst
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heather Knight Oct. 24, 2021 (SFChronicle.com) Sitting on a bench in Golden Gate Park on a recent afternoon, Brooke Jenkins made clear the city\u2019s raging debate over crime and how District Attorney Chesa Boudin responds to it is more complicated than left versus right. Jenkins, a former homicide prosecutor, just quit. Her… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20350"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20350"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20351,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20350\/revisions\/20351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}