News and Press Releases

San Francisco, CA – Public Defender Jeff Adachi has been named a recipient of the 2007 California Lawyer of the Year (CLAY) Award. California Lawyer magazine will recognize Public Defender Adachi for the impact of his work in the field of prisoner reentry. The recipients of the CLAY Awards are featured in the March 2008 issue of California Lawyer. In...

As published in  The Recorder, February 4, 2008. by Evan Hill Prompted by a case out of the public defender’s office, a San Francisco supervisor is pushing to change the rules on accessing the city’s surveillance camera footage. Gerardo Sandoval, a former deputy public defender, presented the legislation to the board on Jan. 8, but off-stage wrangling has stalled the bill...

San Francisco, CA – In a letter addressed to the Board of Supervisors, the Public Defender’s Office, the ACLU of Northern California (“ACLU-NC”) and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights (“LCCR”) requested today that the City enact a policy to ensure that all persons named in San Francisco gang injunctions are given the opportunity to be removed from the injunctions...

As published in The Recorder, December 18, 2007. By Mike McKee. Eighteen years after Dennis Lawley was sentenced to death, evidence literally unearthed last week in a field outside Modesto could bolster defense lawyers’ argument that their client is truly innocent. Scott Kauffman, a staff attorney at the San Francisco-based California Appellate Project, confirmed Monday that four days earlier he...

San Francisco, CA – John M., 23 years old, was acquitted yesterday of robbery and aggravated assault with great bodily harm stemming from an incident in which he was accused of physically attacking and turning his dog on the complaining witness, Adam McFarland. Each count constituted a strike, and the charges carried a potential sentence of 16 years in prison....