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Paralegal's Dates With Defendant Throw Curve Ball at Assault Case
The Recorder
November 11, 2008
A paralegal who assisted San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi with an ongoing, gang-related assault case has admitted to police inspectors that she carried on a yearlong affair with the defendant.
The relationship, which came to light in court filings last month, hasn't derailed Adachi's case, though it complicated his efforts to persuade San.Francisco Superior Court Judge Marla Miller to release the defendant, Pounloeu Chea, on his own recognizance and nearly led to a conflict of interest for the public defender.
Chea and co-defendant Sarith Soun are both charged in connection with the September 2006 stabbing death of a 19-year-old man after a fight over a parking space in front of a Richmond District nightclub. Chea was originally charged with murder, but thanks to an appeal court ruling that altered how courts were to treat murders that result from gang fights, he now only faces charges of assault, accessory after the fact and participating in a gang. Prosecutors allege Chea, who is in his 20s, is a member of a Cambodian gang.
Adachi said paralegal Megan Jordan, 24, had been working with him on the Chea case since taking over for another staffer within the last year. Her relationship with the defendant came to be revealed in court documents after she and Chea had a violent encounter with the mother of Chea's two children, 24-year-old Shirley Cisneros, on Oct. 2.
Now, both Chea and Cisneros are facing charges in connection with the incident, and Assistant District Attorney Harry Dorfman has tried to introduce the confrontation into Chea's stabbing case as evidence of the defendant's violence. This would have created a conflict of interest for Adachi had Dorfman called Jordan to the stand for her account of the incident, Adachi said.
In a motion playing down Chea's role in the confrontation, Adachi said Cisneros allegedly attacked Jordan as she drove Chea to a court date. Cisneros cut Jordan off, got out of her car and threw herself on the hood of Jordan's vehicle. Cisneros then came to Jordan's window, punched her in the head multiple times, slammed her head against the dashboard and attempted to drag Jordan from the car by her hair, according to the motion.
Yet in Dorfman's motion, he alleges that Chea then got out of the car, pulled Cisneros away, and punched her in the back of the head. He dragged her off the street and delivered "multiple blows" to her body with his fists and elbows, Dorfman wrote.
Cisneros now faces charges of vandalism, assault, battery and threats, said Erica Derryck, a spokeswoman for the DA's office, while prosecutors have also charged Chea with two counts of domestic violence and one of assault.
In the days after the altercation, Jordan told investigators that her relationship with Chea was professional and denied they had a "dating relationship," according to a police report. But on Oct. 10, she admitted to an inspector that she had a "personal relationship" with Chea going back a year and said she loved him.
Jordan also told investigators that Cisneros had threatened her in June, but that when she reported the threats to supervisors in the public defender's office, they told her they wanted to keep it "in house," according to a police report.
Jordan resigned from the office about a week after the Oct. 2 incident, Adachi said. She could not be located for comment Friday.
Judge Miller denied Dorfman's motion to introduce Chea's conduct into the stabbing case as evidence of violence. Dorfman did not return a call seeking comment and Derryck said she could not comment on Chea's cases, because they are pending.
Reached Friday, Adachi acknowledged that Cisneros called the public defender's office several times in June to allege that Jordan, a recent college graduate who was hired by the office after an internship, was involved in an inappropriate relationship with Chea.
Adachi said that Kathy Asada, who manages the paralegal unit, told him about the calls. Adachi said he then spoke with Jordan and she assured him that no such relationship existed. He couldn't comment on his discussions with Chea because they fall under the attorney-client privilege.
After the Oct. 2 incident, Adachi said, he asked Jordan about the issue again, but was again assured that there was no romantic relationship. He only learned about it when the police reports came in, he said.
"I never saw any indication that they were having a relationship, I was completely surprised by this," Adachi said.
He denied that anyone in the office ever told Jordan to be silent about Cisneros' claims or keep them "in house," and said he did not notify prosecutors because "it's not a crime to have a relationship, but it would be inappropriate."
Rory Little, a professor and criminal law specialist at Hastings College of the Law, said Chea could raise a conflict issue by saying Jordan's work on his case was "skewed by love, or [they're] on the rocks and it's skewed by hatred," but that the affair won't be disastrous for Adachi's efforts.
"This is definitely something that's not pleasant for the defense case, but I don't think it's a stopper," he said.
"I'm sure [Adachi] wishes somehow he had surfaced this earlier, but people having affairs don't usually run around advertising it."
Before the 2006 stabbing, Chea was the subject of a PBS documentary, "Who I Became," about his emigration from Cambodia and tumultuous life in San Francisco.
Chea was released on his own recognizance after prosecutors dropped the murder charge, but was arrested again after the Oct. 2 incident. He has since posted $50,000 bail and is out of custody, Adachi said.
Adachi and Dorfman are in the process of picking a jury in Chea and Soun's case, and should give opening statements this month.
