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by\u00a0JOE ESKENAZI<\/a><\/strong> May 16, 2025 (MissionLocal.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/newspack-missionlocal.s3.amazonaws.com\/mission\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/ejenkins.jpg\")
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nSign up below to get Mission Local\u2019s free newsletter<\/strong>, a daily digest of news you won\u2019t find elsewhere.Sign up<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sending District Attorney Brooke Jenkins to an ethics diversionary program would be pointless, according to a pair of appeals filed this month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cJenkins has accepted no responsibility for her own actions,\u201d reads a lengthy appeal submitted to the State Bar this month by retired judge Martha Goldin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The State Bar in April ordered Jenkins to participate in an ethics diversionary program<\/a> some 2.5 years after Goldin and former San Francisco Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Grayner filed Bar complaints against her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Want the latest on the Mission and San Francisco? Sign up for our free daily newsletter<\/strong> below.Sign up<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the 2022 complaints contained myriad allegations, the Bar ultimately \u201crequired\u201d Jenkins to attend the course based on only one: Her accessing and dissemination of a confidential rap sheet<\/a> in a case she wasn\u2019t involved in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now both Goldin and Grayner argue that diversion, which is intended to \u201crehabilitate\u201d attorneys, is neither adequate nor suitable, and both have appealed the Bar\u2019s decision. Goldin\u2019s appeal also presents \u201cnew evidence\u201d to back its claims that \u201cJenkins lied to the State Bar.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n In her appeal, Goldin lists instances in which attorneys received far more severe punishments than diversion for middling transgressions, such as allowing a client to directly pay a lawyer\u2019s landlord (one-year suspension) or failing to pay $8,000 in sanctions (six months). <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe State Bar should reopen this matter, because diversion is simply the wrong result for an attorney who fails to show the slightest remorse or acknowledgement of error,\u201d Goldin wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The San Francisco District Attorney\u2019s Office declined to comment for this story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The most serious of the complaints leveled against Jenkins, and the only one the Bar initially felt merited discipline, is this: In October 2021, shortly before she and a colleague, Don du Bain, left the office of DA Chesa Boudin office to work on the campaign to recall their erstwhile boss, Jenkins accessed the confidential rap sheet for Troy McAlister.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n McAlister was a serial felon on parole<\/a> who struck and killed two women on New Year\u2019s Eve 2020 while driving a stolen car and purportedly high on methamphetamine. Jenkins had no connection to his case. Nor did du Bain, to whom she sent the rap sheet at 10 p.m. on a Saturday, using his personal email. Mission Local <\/em>first broke this story<\/a> in November 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The contents of this rap sheet \u2014 which, by some alchemy, found its way into the campaign in which Jenkins and du Bain were participating \u2014 factored into the ultimately successful recall of Boudin. Following Boudin\u2019s ouster, then-Mayor London Breed appointed Jenkins DA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Under California law, it is a misdemeanor to send a rap sheet to someone who is not authorized to view it. One must demonstrate both a \u201cright to know\u201d and a \u201cneed to know\u201d to access and view this confidential material, which can only be used for \u201claw-enforcement purposes.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n To obtain and maintain access to the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (CLETS), the system that Jenkins used to view and download the rap sheet, users need to pass a test<\/a> every two years that clearly spells out these requirements. These are matters that prosecutors, paralegals and even interns in a DA\u2019s office learn on or near their first day in the office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The State Bar, in an April letter to Grayner, indicated that it believed that Jenkins had potentially broken the law<\/a>: \u201cThere is evidence that Jenkins should not have accessed or handled McAlister\u2019s rap sheet in the way she did, given the statutory limits on access and use of criminal history information,\u201d the State Bar wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jenkins\u2019 office, however, insists that no wrongdoing took place. In an April email to Mission Local<\/em>, it claimed that, as du Bain was an employee of the DA\u2019s office, he was authorized to receive this rap sheet, so no misdemeanor occurred. The DA\u2019s office asked Mission Local <\/em>to \u201cclarify\/correct\u201d an April 9 article<\/a> on the matter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cJust because you work in the DA\u2019s office doesn\u2019t mean you have access to everyone\u2019s criminal files or confidential information. That is not the way it works.\u201d FORMER SAN FRANCISCO AND LOS ANGELES DA GEORGE GASC\u00d3N<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The DA\u2019s claim appears to directly contravene the findings of the State Bar, as well as the interpretation of state law espoused by numerous experts, including several current<\/a> and former<\/a> elected district attorneys who spoke with Mission Local. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The DA\u2019s office has yet to explain why either Jenkins or du Bain, who were not assigned to this case, had either a \u201cright to know\u201d or a \u201cneed to know\u201d the content of McAlister\u2019s rap sheet \u2014 let alone both \u2014 or what law-enforcement purpose was served by its downloading and dissemination. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cJust because you work in the DA\u2019s office doesn\u2019t mean you have access to everyone\u2019s criminal files or confidential information,\u201d former San Francisco and Los Angeles DA George Gasc\u00f3n told<\/a> Mission Local <\/em>last month. \u201cThat is not the way it works.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe simple fact of being a deputy district attorney does not authorize you to access anyone\u2019s records at any time,\u201d added<\/a> Stanford University law professor George Fisher, a former prosecutor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mission Local<\/em> did not issue a clarification or a correction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Separate from the McAlister matter, Judge Goldin\u2019s appeal to the State Bar describes \u201cnew evidence\u201d that \u201cJenkins lied to the State Bar.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Goldin\u2019s appeal is based, in part, on Jenkins\u2019 statements to the Bar about her successful 2021 prosecution of Daniel Gudino<\/a>, a mentally ill man found guilty of gruesomely murdering his own mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2023, the Court of Appeal found that Jenkins committed prosecutorial misconduct<\/a>, although it declined to reverse the guilty verdict or free Gudino. Specifically, the court found that during her closing argument, Jenkins improperly made reference to excluded evidence and impugned the integrity of Gudino\u2019s public defender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In an April letter to Goldin, the Bar wrote that Jenkins explained her statements about the opposing counsel during the case, telling Bar investigators that defense experts had not been provided key evidence \u201cuntil the evening before Gudino testified.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Bar also wrote that Jenkins told its investigators it appeared Gudino knew that he was killing his mother \u201cbased on what he told the jury.\u201d The problem here, Goldin notes in her appeal, is that Gudino never testified. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She submits the appellant\u2019s brief and a witness statement as proof of this. Gudino\u2019s public defender, Ilona Ya\u00f1ez, confirmed to Mission Local <\/em>that Gudino did not testify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cJenkins\u2019 defense to the State Bar,\u201d Goldin writes, \u201cseems to be built around her repeated false claim that Mr. Gudino testified.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In another case, writes Goldin, Bar investigators say Jenkins told them that she provided incorrect instructions to a jury in 2014 about a defendant\u2019s decision not to testify because she was a \u201cvery new attorney\u201d who \u201cnaively repeated the judge who first made the error.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But, Goldin notes, Jenkins was not new, and it was not the judge who made the mistake: In 2014, Jenkins had already been a lawyer for some eight years; she was admitted to the Georgia State Bar in November 2006, and the California State Bar in June 2011. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Court transcripts of the case, which Goldin included in her appeal, also indicate that the flawed jury instructions were provided by Jenkins,\u00a0not the judge, Gerardo Sandoval (whom Jenkins would\u00a0excoriate<\/a>\u00a0by name on social media in 2025).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n https:\/\/x.com\/BrookeJenkinsSF\/status\/1885418074175922251?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1885418074175922251%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmissionlocal.org%2F2025%2F05%2Fda-jenkins-lied-to-the-state-bar-retired-judge-says-and-should-face-discipline-beyond-diversion%2F<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Jenkins\u2019 mistake was serious enough that defendant Ronnie Wilborn\u2019s conviction was subsequently overturned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, in another matter, the Bar wrote in April that Jenkins chalked up a statement she made in a September 2022 candidate forum \u2014 that she had never committed misconduct \u2014 to the \u201cintense pressure\u201d felt during the debate. This would require disregarding the 2014 Wilborn case, and, in her May appeal, Goldin provided two other non-debate instances in which Jenkins made the same claim. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In April, responding to the State Bar\u2019s diversion decision, Jenkins stated that \u201cpolitical opponents, who were ardent supporters of Chesa, attempted to weaponize the State Bar\u2019s complaint process.\u201d In her May rejoinder, Goldin uses this against her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cJenkins has accepted no responsibility for her own actions,\u201d reads Goldin\u2019s appeal. \u201cShe derided well-founded complaints as an attempt to \u2018weaponize\u2019 the State Bar process and her staff asked a journalist to minimize the nature of her misconduct. It could not be clearer that diversion will not be effective at achieving its stated goals in this case.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Grayner, like Goldin, calls on the Bar to do more: \u201cRather than accept accountability for her misconduct, which the State Bar has only conditionally determined requires her to participate in diversion, Brooke Jenkins is intentionally misrepresenting the law and the State Bar\u2019s findings to boost her public image.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n We’re a small, independent, nonprofit newsroom<\/strong> that works hard to bring you news you can’t get elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Managing Editor\/Columnist. Joe was born in San Francisco, raised in the Bay Area, and attended U.C. Berkeley. He never left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYour humble narrator\u201d was a writer and columnist for SF Weekly from 2007 to 2015, and a senior editor at San Francisco Magazine from 2015 to 2017. You may also have read his work in the Guardian (U.S. and U.K.); San Francisco Public Press; San Francisco Chronicle; San Francisco Examiner; Dallas Morning News; and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He resides in the Excelsior with his wife and three (!) kids, 4.3 miles from his birthplace and 5,474 from hers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Northern California branch of the Society of Professional Journalists named Eskenazi the 2019 Journalist of the Year.More by Joe Eskenazi<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pair of appeals says State Bar\u2019s offer of diversion for S.F. DA is too light by\u00a0JOE ESKENAZI May 16, 2025 (MissionLocal.org) Sign up below to get Mission Local\u2019s free newsletter, a daily digest of news you won\u2019t find elsewhere.Sign up Sending District Attorney Brooke Jenkins to an ethics diversionary program would… Continue reading <\/figure>\n\n\n\nJenkins obtained and shared a confidential rap sheet<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Pair of appeals ask for more serious penalty<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Jenkins \u2018lied to the State Bar,\u2019 former judge says<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
A \u2018very new attorney\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\u2018Weaponizing\u2019 the process?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nJOE ESKENAZI<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n