Special to the Vanguard
San Francisco, CA – On Thursday, the San Francisco Superior Court dismissed 69 misdemeanor cases against SF Public Defender clients after an appellate court ruled last month that the Superior Court had unlawfully delayed a misdemeanor trial for over a year using COVID-19 as an excuse.
A state appellate court found in a July ruling that the San Francisco Superior Court had unlawfully delayed a misdemeanor trial for over a year using COVID-19 as an excuse, despite the fact that all pandemic-related emergency orders had long been lifted.
The First Appellate District opinion that the Superior Court had gone “beyond its proper judicial role” and had “stepped into the shoes of the prosecution,” and ordered it to dismiss the case.
“The Superior Court did the right and lawful thing today—at long last—in dismissing our clients’ misdemeanor cases after depriving them of their Constitutionally-mandated right to a speedy trial,” said Deputy Public Defender Andrea Lindsay, a manager of the SF Public Defender’s Misdemeanor Unit. “These trial delays have greatly disrupted our clients’ lives and livelihoods. Many people have been subjected to prolonged pretrial conditions, like wearing electronic ankle monitors, and have been made to attend multiple court dates—requiring time off from work or school as well as childcare and transportation—only to be denied their rights and faced with more delays.”
The SF Superior Court, while delaying these misdemeanor trials, let usable courtrooms sit empty, prioritized civil lawsuits, and failed to pursue alternative venues. After the Superior Court reopened following COVID-19 closures in 2020, it delayed thousands of individuals’ felony and misdemeanor trials—at its peak leaving more than 240 individuals languishing in jail past their speedy trial deadline, often subjecting them to lockdown conditions that threatened their physical and mental health. The San Francisco Public Defender’s office, along with several other community organizations, challenged these delays via litigation as well as public protests.
San Francisco prosecutors have, until recently, joined the Superior Court’s argument that COVID-19 was a viable reason to delay criminal cases months, even years, past individuals’ trial deadlines.
“Giving people their day in court is a fundamental right that is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights for a reason,” said Mano Raju, the elected Public Defender of San Francisco. “The government, in this case,the court, has been violating the rights and liberty of individuals who are presumed innocent under the law. The court deprived our clients of their day in court, and to dismiss those cases, as other county courts have done, is the fair and appropriate legal remedy.”
For more information about the San Francisco Superior Court backlog, please visit https://sfpublicdefender.org/open-sf-courts-now.
