For now, the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office will not have to pay a large fine it was hit with last month after a judge found the agency was in contempt of court for refusing to take on some new cases.
The First District Court of Appeal ruled that San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju would not immediately have to pay the $26,000 sanction imposed by Superior Court Judge Harry Dorfman in late March, records show.
The saga began last May, when Raju’s office said it was overwhelmed with cases and began to refuse certain ones, leaving some indigent defendants languishing in custody without legal representation. Though court-appointed attorneys stepped in to relieve public defenders, those attorneys reached their own caps and began turning down cases.
The chaotic situation had ripple effects on the entire court system.
Dorfman ultimately concluded that the public defender’s office did have available staffing to accommodate felony cases, and ordered the public defender to take on more cases. When the office refused, the judge ruled that Raju was in contempt of court 26 times, and levied a $1,000 fine for each instance the agency had passed over a case.
In hearings, Raju had argued that his attorneys were under untenable workloads that were exceeding the recommended limits per attorney, according to state standards. During the hearing in which Dorfman imposed the fine, longtime public defenders said they had reached their capacities trying to manage an influx of new cases filed by the District Attorney’s Office and were regularly working 60-hour work weeks.
“I have not felt (caught up) in years,” Seith Meisels, a deputy public defender who has practiced law in San Francisco for 21 years, said at the March hearing. “There’s simply too much work and not enough time.”
Multiple attorneys said they believed the DA’s office was overcharging cases by prosecuting crimes that they could not actually prove, or which would not go to trial. Attorneys for Raju said he was violating the court order for ethical reasons.
Raju on Friday said he was grateful for the appellate court’s decision to halt the fine.
“Individuals accused of crimes have a constitutional right to an attorney with the time and resources necessary to effectively litigate their cases,” Raju said Friday in a release. “ I stand by my decision to safeguard the constitutional rights of our clients and look forward to addressing on appeal the complex legal questions this case presents.”
It was not immediately clear when the next review of the case would be.