Judge fines San Francisco public defender after finding him in contempt for refusing new cases

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A judge has fined San Francisco’s public defender $26,000 for ignoring a January order to stop rejecting cases — a pattern that critics say is straining the city’s justice system.

Public Defender Mano Raju began declining to represent some defendants in new felony and misdemeanor cases last May, citing a crushing workload driven by increased prosecutions and insufficient staffing. He wants money for more attorneys or for the court to reject some of cases brought by District Attorney Brooke Jenkins.

“Every member of my team could cut their workload in half, and they would still have more than a full-time job,” Raju told The Associated Press.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Harry Dorfman ordered Raju in January to stop declining cases, but Raju refused and Dorfman this month found him in contempt. On Tuesday, he fined him $1,000 for each of the initial 26 cases he rejected since that order and set another hearing in April to add more fines. Raju said he plans to appeal and keep declining some new cases.

Public defenders and staff from across California packed into the courtroom in support of Raju. He told the judge the heavy workload affects the quality of representation his office can provide, which violates the human rights of defendants and negatively impacts his staff.

“People and their families get hurt when we can’t provide the representation we should and our staff suffers the residual trauma,” he said.

The move puts Raju, a progressive and the only elected public defender in California, at odds with Jenkins, who said his actions are disrupting the justice system and could lead to violent defendants being released due to lack of legal representation.

“Their objective is to disrupt the system, it’s to cause chaos, it is to bottleneck the courthouse,” Jenkins said.

Courts from Oregon to Massachusetts have been struggling with too few public defenders for years, with Oregon’s Supreme Court issuing a February ruling that will result in the dismissal of more than 1,400 cases due to a lack of timely representation. But the public spat between Raju, the district attorney and a judge is unusually contentious and political.

It follows years of debate in San Francisco over public safety. Mayor Daniel Lurie was elected in 2024 on a promise to restore the city’s battered image after years of negative national attention, and he’s pledged to clean up city streets. His election came after voters in 2022 recalled prosecutor Chesa Boudin over frustrations about what they saw as his permissive approach to street crime. Jenkins replaced him and has ramped up prosecutions — she filed 8,000 felony and misdemeanor cases last year, compared to about 5,600 filed in 2021.

Raju is using disruption as leverage during a tough budget fight and not presenting a genuine dispute over public safety policy, said Jason McDaniel, a San Francisco State University political science professor who is writing a book about San Francisco politics. Lurie is dealing with a $400 million budget deficit.

“If this really were a policy fight rather than a fight for resources, that would be something that I think voters would really get upset about because more progressive positions on law enforcement have received a lot of pushback from the majority of voters in San Francisco,” McDaniel said.

San Francisco’s violent crime rates are among the lowest in recent years, but drug-related crimes, petty theft and other low-level offenses remain prevalent. Jenkins said prosecution rates have returned to pre-pandemic levels because unlike her predecessor, she is enforcing every law.

A surge in prosecutions of low-level crimes, coupled with the growing volume of digital and video evidence to review, are driving an unsustainable workload, Raju said. He accused Jenkins of “clogging up the courts” and said his attorneys are working extreme hours, skipping vacations and experiencing serious health impacts due to overwhelming workloads.

Raju pointed to a 2023 national study on public defender workload conducted by the RAND Corporation that found that excessive workloads violate ethics rules and cause harm to defendants. He said his attorneys average 60 felony cases and 135 misdemeanor cases at a time, well above the up to 40 felony and 80 misdemeanor cases recommended in a 2025 study by the Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center at Southern Methodist University.

Heavy workloads among public defenders often lead to defendants waiting longer than necessary to resolve their cases, he said. He said that so far no one has been left without legal representation in San Francisco because his office coordinates with city-contracted private attorneys. The Bar Association of San Francisco, which has stepped in to represent some defendants, told the judge its attorneys are now at capacity and cannot accept new clients.

Dorfman determined Raju’s office has enough staff to handle the workload and noted some supervising public defenders could take more cases. He also said the Public Defender’s Office should stop assigning two attorneys to some felony cases, which Raju said is done sometimes for training purposes.

The studies suggesting limits to public defense caseload referenced by Raju are worthy of consideration, but “they are not California law,,” Dorfman wrote in his January ruling.

He said in court Tuesday that while he found Raju has acted in good faith before the court, “that does not mean that I’m going to retreat or stay a court order.”

“The court is not a bystander in this,” he said. “The law compels the court to appoint a public defender when necessary.”