News and Press Releases

The Clean Slate Program 2007-2008 evaluation examines how efficiently Clean Slate delivers services and the impacts that Clean Slate services have on clients’ lives. The Clean Slate Program extends legal advocacy beyond an arrest or disposition by the court so that clients may avail themselves of opportunities to “clean up” their criminal records, even decades after their criminal case is...

The second week of the new court has been more of the same.  Each day, about five or six cases are scheduled to be heard in court, and most of the cases end up being discharged simply because they aren’t bona fide cases.  What I mean by this that they are cases that otherwise would not be charged in a...

You may have heard or read that the new Community “Justice” Center (CJC) opened last week.  Based on Brooklyn’s Red Hook Community Justice Center, the CJC is supposed to  solve neighborhood problems like drugs, crime, prostitution and theft.  The court is a full-fledged court, except that it is situated in the Tenderloin and deals with misdemeanor and low-level felony cases.    Although this new...

San Francisco, CA – A San Francisco man, who was strip-searched and misidentified by police, was acquitted of drug sales in 70 minutes after his deputy public defender exposed the prosecution’s case as devoid of evidence of illegal activity. “The scary thing about this case is that what happened to my client could have happened to anyone,” Deputy Public Defender...

The need for a well-resourced and comprehensive public defense system was made evident in a study released yesterday by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD) indicating that African Americans and Hispanics are over-represented in the criminal justice system and more likely to require a public defender than their Caucasian counterparts.