When Roland Harper rolled his wheelchair before Judge Harry Dorfman on Monday at the Hall of Justice, a routine question followed: Would the public defender’s office represent the indigent defendant?
Chief Deputy Public Defender Matt Gonzalez said no.
“Your honor, we are not going to accept an appointment in this matter,” Gonzalez said, citing crushing caseloads.
Dorfman replied: “You have willfully refused to follow the order.”
The exchange was a theatrical flourish in San Francisco’s escalating criminal court crisis: a refusal by the public defender’s office to take every felony client the court has asked it to represent since May. In October, the San Francisco Superior Court said it would begin releasing defendants from pre-trial custody due to the standoff. It’s unclear if any have been let go.
Gonzalez and his boss, San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju, are being threatened with charges of contempt of court for their refusal. Dorfman, who said he has determined that the office has “available attorneys,” ordered both men to appear before him next week. The office is expected to file a request for a stay with a higher court.
The order was not unexpected. Dorfman had informed the parties previously that if the public defender failed to take on a new client in his court Monday, he would potentially order them in contempt.
Dorfman’s move was the culmination of a long series of hearings that began last year due to the public defender’s decision to turn down some felony cases on certain days of the week, arguing that it could not adequately represent them.
Judge Harry Dorfman threatened members of the public defender’s office with contempt of court. | Source: Michael Macor/The SF Chronicle/Getty Images
At one hearing last year, Dorfman explained that he was adjudicating whether the public defender had reason for the refusals.
“I have to figure out when you decide you’re unavailable, is it really true that there is no felony capable lawyer to step in for a new felony case?” said Dorfman, who admitted that the court has played a role in delays and bureaucratic slowdowns due to a lack of available judges and courtrooms.
The refusals have had a host of downstream effects. Fill-in private attorneys, who have taken on more than 600 additional cases, have also run out of resources to represent indigent defendants. This leaves many defendants to linger in jail until an attorney is available.
“We have now had to transport clients day after day after day,” said Rani Singh, chief legal counsel at the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department. “Our deputies have been told by clients that they are sick of waiting for attorneys, and some have refused to come to court because they don’t expect to get attorneys.”
Lawyer shortage or a choice
In the hearings that preceded Dorfman’s order, the public defender tussled with the district attorney’s office.
“The public defender’s office should not have a problem handling the cases that they are legally required to,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Ana Gonzalez said in a hearing late last year. “We do consider that this decision of unavailability is basically an abdication of their constitutional duties.”
Gonzalez said that during prior eras when caseloads skyrocketed, no such emergency was declared. She said the number of new felony cases has been basically flat for four years.
Representatives of the office of District Attorney Brooke Jenkins have argued that the public defender has failed to fulfill its constitutional responsibility. | Source: Benjamin Fanjoy for The Standard
She also argued that many of the court delays are due to the public defender, who often prolongs cases by choice and refuses to settle many cases.
Hadi Razzaq of the public defender’s office said the attorneys have myriad duties beyond trying cases. He said the office’s 47 felony attorneys each have 61 cases on average, and taking on more would mean being unable to properly represent their clients.
Razzaq said the attorneys handle both new and ongoing cases, which means new filings do not paint the whole picture. Additionally, some divisions in the office that are funded through certain city funds or grants and so cannot take typical felony cases.
“The filings are useful to know about, but pending cases really reflect the ongoing work,” Razzaq said, noting that there were 2,868 active felony cases in January 2019 and 4,328 in November 2025.
But Gonzalez said most of those cases were dormant, in a post-trial phase, or involved one client facing multiple charges over time. She referenced the late Jeff Adachi, who was public defender from 2002 to 2019, saying he “didn’t need to declare an emergency and stop taking cases despite the fact that filings were substantially higher and they probably had less lawyers.”