his week The Recorder is giving San Francisco's public defender candidates an opportunity to speak to our readers in their own voices. Last week we sat down with Jeffrey Adachi, the former chief deputy attorney in the office, and incumbent Kimiko Burton. Today we present excerpts of the interview with Adachi; tomorrow, Burton.
Recorder: Why should the voters choose you?
Jeffrey Adachi: I've dedicated my whole life to being a public defender. I spent 15 years in that office, straight out of law school. My desire to be a public defender comes from both my parents' and grandparents' experience of being interned during the war. They lost everything, stripped of all their possessions, and were incarcerated for four years. Their struggle for justice is something that has always stayed with me. ...
I started at the bottom, in the lowest attorney position in the office, handling misdemeanor cases. I really set out to be the best, because public defenders, in popular media, have a terrible reputation. So I set out not only to be the best public defender, but to establish the reputation of a top trial lawyer.
I tried 28 jury trials in my first 18 months in the office. I was really working hard. And in a period of about five years I was trying homicide cases, and rose to the top trial lawyer position in a very short period of time. I was handling high-profile cases by the time I was six or seven years out. And I've handled 2,500 criminal cases over my career, and I've tried over 100 jury trials, everything from misdemeanors to death penalty cases.
And in 1998 I was promoted to the office's second-in-command; it's called the chief attorney. And my responsibility was to manage a whole office. ...
When I came in it was an office that was in crisis. We had pulled out of one of the felony courtrooms because we didn't have sufficient staffing. Our pleas for more attorneys were just falling on deaf ears. When I came in we'd been out of there for a year and a half. The city was pouring about $2 million a year into that department for the private lawyers. So I negotiated to go back in there for about a third of the cost, 10 new positions. So that was the first thing I did, increase the staff by about 10 percent.
We also had never received any federal or state funding before. And I set out to start applying for grants. These were grants I wrote myself, and in the course of six or seven months I was able to bring in a half-million dollars in outside funding. I took that money and I created the office's first Three Strikes unit.
This is a quote that my opponent [said], "Oh yeah, all the money is because of me, because I was the head of the mayor's criminal justice council." Well, it needs to be pointed out, all the money that comes into the city and county goes through the mayor's criminal justice council, as a matter of practicality. I was the one that actually wrote the grants. I was the one that put the concept together that we're actually funding. ...
Recorder: You mentioned the mixed feelings that the public has about public defenders. Given those mixed feelings, do you think it's appropriate that this be an elective office?
Adachi: I think it's a good thing that the public defender is an elective office. Because it's important that our office be independent of government, independent of the other departments like the police department, the sheriff's department, the DA's office, the court system, also the mayor and the supervisors. Because if you think about what a public defender is supposed to do, we're paid by the government to fight the government, and protect the rights of the individual.
Now if we're in bed with the police, the district attorney or the court system, or we're at the whim of a politician, then you have a situation that has developed in some counties where there is an appointed public defender, where the public defender's job is to do it as cheap as possible. And the only pitch the public defender makes when applying for the position is, "I can do it for X dollars less than the next person." That doesn't mean that you're acting in the best interest of your client. In fact, it's just the opposite.
You have to look at other counties where the appointive system has worked. I think Alameda County is a good example, where Diane Bellas - she's been one of my heroes forever - was appointed as public defender. Here you have somebody who has 18 years of experience, has held every managerial position in that office, has tried dozens and dozens of jury trials. Just a consummate lawyer and manager.
And in San Francisco, our appointments in large part have been made based on politics, nepotism. You have the situation where the mayor chose somebody with four years' experience as a low-level, misdemeanor attorney - had done some felony work - who had tried basically one felony jury trial, and had never managed a law office before, being put into the top position in the office. It's like, would you bring in a fire chief who had only fought five small fires in his or her life?
Recorder: You're trying to unseat the goddaughter of Willie Brown. What's to stop the mayor from slashing your budget if you succeed, and should voters take that risk?
Adachi: The public defender's office is the only department that is constitutionally mandated. We have to exist. We could not be slashed out of existence.
In terms of cutting down the budget, that's happening already. There's a tremendous deficit. They're talking about 10 percent across the board cut, plus a hiring freeze. I would be very concerned about somebody who is beholden to the mayor in that position, and being afraid to go to the mayor and ask for additional resources. I'm not going to be afraid to do that.
When I was chief attorney, I was successful in bringing 10 new attorneys to the office through my negotiations with the mayor. ...
Recorder: Could you tell us a little about your management experience?
Adachi:[When I became chief deputy], the investigation unit was a joke. Investigations ... were not being done. I revamped the whole system. I put an attorney by the name of Teresa Caffese in charge of the investigations office and changed the whole system to create a team approach. We made it very clear that it was not going to be acceptable to miss deadlines. And I'm very proud to say that in the last year that I was chief attorney, I think we missed two or three deadlines in a year. It was a remarkable transformation. ...
I also made it very clear that we expected people to go to trial. What had happened before I became chief was that the trial statistics had fallen off the map. We had tried the lowest number of felony jury trials - it was about 40 in 1997 - in the history of the office. The misdemeanor trials had also fallen off.
People were saying, "Well, that's because Terence Hallinan's office is soft on crime and we can get great deals." But I believe that if you have a caseload of, say, 150 felony cases a year, and none of those cases are going to trial, you have to ask why. We had lawyers in the office who hadn't gone to trial for three or four years. And in order to maintain credibility as a trial lawyer, you have to try cases.
It took awhile to change the culture in the office. I did that by providing training. We did retreats; there's this controversial retreat with Maureen Kallins that [The Recorder] wrote about. But I also did a retreat with Gerry Spence for three days in San Diego. The felony attorneys spent three days working on trial skills. We did about 20 or 30 trainings every year in the office. ...
At the same time, I implemented employee evaluations. That had never been done before. I sat down with all the employees, from clerical staff to the attorneys, and we devised a system beginning with self-evaluation in all different areas, because the lawyers are saying the supervisor never sees my best moments. The supervisors received evaluations, received outside feedback from judges and prosecutors and clients. And then we sit down with the managers, Jeff Brown and myself, and evaluated performance. ...
Now that's 130 evaluations in a year, so that's a big job. But that's the kind of oversight that it takes to make sure the office is functioning properly. ...
Recorder: What would you change about the current management of the office?
Adachi: People have asked that, are you going to do the same thing Kim Burton did. Number one, I know what it is like to be fired for political reasons. I had that experience. And I would not fire anybody for political reasons. In fact I'm running because I do not believe the office should be politicized in that way.
She talks about diversity and about being the first female public defender. Well, I was the first chief attorney of color in the history of the office, and she fired me and put Randy Martin in my place. ...
Recorder: You paint a pretty dismal picture of the office circa 1997, which would have been under the reign of Jeff Brown. He put you in your job, he obviously endorsed you for a time, and has now switched his endorsement. What are we to make of how Jeff Brown ran the office, and what's behind whatever's going on between you and him?
Adachi: Jeff Brown took the office from a place where it was one of the worst offices in the nation. ... He took that office and professionalized it. Brought it [from about 35] to 85 lawyers, brought in a support staff, got us a building away from the Hall of Justice, which was extremely significant. ... So they took the office light years ahead.
What I saw as my role was taking it to the next level. Bringing technology into the office. Jeff had been there for 20 years, and he was looking at, "Now it's time for me to leave and pass that leadership to somebody else." All these things I put in place were run by him. And he supported me with open arms, which was great. ... He was the one who asked me to run. He began introducing me to people in the political world. He gave me my start, I'm extremely grateful for that. I wouldn't be sitting right here if it weren't for Jeff Brown.
But in January of 2001 when he tried to accept the position with the Public Utilities Commission, that did change. Suddenly, he was in a different position. ... By that point it was already clear - John Burton had begun making calls six months before then. He wanted that [public defender] seat for his daughter.
In pulling his support, the way it happened was, Jeff has not spoken to me since he left the office. I haven't heard anything different about his support, the endorsement. And I called Jeff and asked him to sign my ballot statement, he said he was going to think about it - and then I received a letter from him indicating that he was withdrawing his endorsement, and I understood, in both our conversation and what he wrote in the letter, that he was not going to take a position in this race because of his position on the state PUC.
And about two weeks ago I was at a candidates' night meeting when Kim Burton pulled out a letter and said she had Jeff Brown's support. ...
Recorder: You mentioned the Maureen Kallins "KILL" training. She is pretty controversial as a trial lawyer. She's been cited for contempt numerous times. If you're public defender, do you want your deputies to litigate in that style?
Adachi: Well, Maureen Kallins is a tremendous lawyer, in terms of her trial experience, her courtroom skills. This wasn't a workshop on how to be held in contempt. It was a workshop for young lawyers on how to try cases. She's tried hundreds of criminal trials in her career.
It was an intensive workshop. I attended the first class to se what it was about. It ran from 7 a.m. to 10:30 at night as a one-day - we called it a retreat. And it took groups of 10 lawyers through a trial, with witnesses - she actually had witnesses there who were cross-examined. Opening statements, closing arguments, the whole nine yards. And I felt it was an extremely effective program.
In terms of lawyers being held in contempt, some of the best lawyers in this country have been held in contempt. That comes with the territory.
Recorder: You mentioned being sensitive to diversity issues as a manager. And I think you're getting some support from the Japanese-American community. There was a 1993 case where a judge granted a Wheeler motion, saying that you had discriminated against Asian-Americans in jury selection. How does that square with your push for more sensitivity to diversity issues?
Adachi: I've always been a champion of diversity. I myself went to law school through an affirmative action program. I've been involved in different ethnic activist work for 20 years in the Bay Area. I was president of the Asian-American Bar Association. I founded the Minority Bar Coalition. ...
What I did in that particular instance, it was a misdemeanor drunk driving case, and there was already a challenge going on concerning the selection of jurors. There was a major death penalty case in which it was determined that there was discrimination going on in the selection of [the S.F. jury pool]. And so what we did, we challenged that. Because what we were finding, we were getting jurors who were disproportionate to one race or another. Now the fact that this particular panel happened to be [disproportionately] Asian-American, it was an issue. My client was African-American, and he asked me to make that challenge.
And so it became an issue, because I am Asian-American. Why is an Asian-American attorney challenging Asian-American jurors? And in order to perfect our record, there were allegations made that I'd discriminated against Asian-American jurors, and that just was not true.
You look at my history and my record. In fact, when a judge attacked me for my being Japanese-American, I stood up. So I think people have to look at the totality of my background.
