San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju. A judge ordered his office to pay a $26,000 fine after refusing to take on some new cases, citing an already crushing workload.
Jessica Christian/S.F. Chronicle
A judge fined San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju $26,000 Tuesday for his office’s continued refusal to take on some new cases as attorneys strain to keep up with what Raju has described as crushing workloads.
The Public Defender’s Office must pay the fine within 17 days, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Harry Dorfman ruled. He previously held Raju in contempt of court for refusing to accept some new cases after finding the office had available attorneys who could take on new work.
Dorfman found the Public Defender’s Office in contempt of court 26 times, fining the agency $1,000 each time. Raju has argued that his attorneys cannot provide adequate counsel to their clients if the lawyers are inundated with cases, and told reporters after the hearing that his office planned to appeal the ruling.
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Public defenders on Tuesday said they were at their limit trying to manage an influx of new cases filed by the District Attorney’s Office and an increase in the sheer amount of material that now accompanied each case, based on developments in video and forensic evidence. They also rejected the notion that the onus was merely on public defenders, calling it a “systemic” issue.
“There is so much that happens outside of these four walls that you don’t see that requires so much time,” said Deputy Public Defender Tal Klement, who took the podium to tell Dorfman he regularly works 60-hour work weeks trying to keep up with his caseload. “The whole system is being crushed under the weight of increased filings.”
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Tuesday’s hearing was the latest flashpoint in a saga that began last May, when Raju’s office began to refuse some cases — a choice that left some defendants stranded in custody without legal representation and increased delays throughout the court system. The situation intensified after court-appointed attorneys who stepped in to relieve public defenders also began to turn down some cases after hitting their own ceilings.
Raju had said his refusal was a response to a workload in his office that had become impossible and was exceeding the recommended limits per attorney in accordance to standards set by the California Public Defense Workloads and Staffing, which found that attorneys for indigent clients should carry no more than 40 felony cases or 80 misdemeanor cases at a time. For comparison, felony attorneys in Raju’s office handled 60 cases and misdemeanor attorneys were handling 135 cases on average as of February.
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He had previously said he would be guided by his ethical and constitutional obligations, not a “judge’s threats to fine me.”
Seth Meisels, a public defender who has practiced in San Francisco for 21 years, told Dorfman on Tuesday that he worked weekends, nights and early mornings to manage the hundreds of hours of work that each of his case requires, whether it would go to trial or not.
“As your honor knows, most of our cases will not go to trial,” said Meisels, adding that he believed the DA was “overcharging” cases by charging crimes that they could not actually prove, as seen by certain trials that reached aquittals. “I have not felt (caught up) in years. There’s simply too much work and not enough time.”
Kory DeClark, a pro-bono attorney who is representing Raju, argued against sanctions imposed on the office and stressed that doing so would exacerbate issues the agency already faces related to funding.
“This is not a case where Raju has something personally to gain from disobeying the court order,” said DeClark. “He does it because he has ethical obligations that he will violate — that are part of the law — if he follows (your) order.”
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Before issuing his ruling, Dorfman reiterated that he had concluded the office did have available staffing to handle felony cases, even if it was clear they were working hard on other cases. He noted he had received more than 45 letters in support of the public defender’s office’s position.
“I know there is a political dimension to these circumstances. Those are for you and politicians in town to have those discussions,” said Dorfman. “(But) this has been going on for more than 10 months now. As far as I can tell as of today, it’s still going on.”
Raju has said his office has been in ongoing discussions with Mayor Daniel Lurie on the subject of staffing and urgent relief.