News and Press Releases

San Francisco, CA – Deputy Public Defender Patricia Lee, a 29-year veteran of the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, will be honored with the California Wellness Foundation’s 2007 California Peace Prize. The 15th Annual California Peace Prize ceremony will be held in San Francisco on November 14, 2007. In recognition of her efforts to prevent violence and promote peace, Lee...

San Francisco, CA – The preliminary hearing of Omeed Aziz Popal, 30, is set to begin at 9:00 a.m. on November 7, 2007, at the Hall of Justice, 850 Bryant Street, Dept. 20. Popal is facing attempted murder charges in connection with a series of alleged hit-and-run incidents that injured eighteen people in San Francisco on August 29, 2006. Popal,...

San Francisco, CA – Last week, robbery and assault charges against two men were dismissed based, in part, on videotaped evidence from San Francisco crime-surveillance cameras. The videotapes, which were obtained by the Public Defender’s Office, confirmed their alibis that they were elsewhere at the time the crimes were committed. The two men, Neil Butler, 23, and Robert Dillon, 21,...

San Francisco, CA – Chief Attorney Teresa Caffese, the lead defense attorney in the much publicized 2005 LaShuan Harris case, will discuss her trial strategy at the 38th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law this weekend in Miami, Florida. She will join John Gould, M.D., Maguire Correctional Facility, Chief Psychiatrist, in a panel discussion entitled...

San Francisco, CA – The Public Defender’s Office was again able to successfully remove a person from the City Attorney’s gang list, this time in the Western Addition injunction. Makia Johnson was ordered excluded from the Western Addition gang injunction by Superior Court Judge Peter J. Busch. In a 14-page decision, Judge Busch ruled that “the evidence is not sufficient...