San Francisco court freeing pre-trial custody defendants, no attorneys available

The San Francisco Superior Court said Tuesday it will release defendants from pre-trial custody effective immediately because they do not have an attorney to represent them and the Public Defender's Office has declared its lawyers "unavailable."

Presiding Judge Rochelle C. East and Court Executive Officer Brandon E. Riley announced that the court is making temporary changes to criminal case processing after the San Francisco Public Defender Manohar Raju said his office was unable to take new cases, leaving hundreds of indigent defendants without counsel.

In an emailed statement Tuesday, the Public Defender's Office said it had declined new appointments citing excessive caseloads and staffing shortages. Private attorneys who stepped in through the Bar Association of San Francisco have now reached their limits as well, the court said.

"San Francisco public defenders continue to take on the vast majority of new cases and continue to face overwhelming caseloads, the Public Defender's Office said in its statement.

"This is despite the fact that the District Attorney has increased filings by nearly 60% over the past three years. Many of those cases represent misdemeanor 'quality-of-life' charges against people suffering from poverty and substance use disorder who would be better served not by the carceral system, but by public health and housing services."

In a phone interview Tuesday, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said she was "absolutely surprised" to hear of the court's decision.

"I don't believe that the court has done enough to prevent this from happening," Jenkins said. "The Public Defender's Office needs to do their job, and they're [the court] making a choice to bend the knee to the will of the public defender."

Jenkins said she continues to see "inefficiencies" in the court system and that 70% of the pending misdemeanor cases at the court are eligible for statutory diversion.

'The court has jurisdiction over whether to offer diversion," Jenkins said. "And yet it's never being accepted. These offers are being rejected by the public defender's office and so they are making a choice: to advise their clients not to accept these offers of diversion and thereby ballooning the caseload that is pending right now because that fits their agenda to clog up the courtrooms, so that therefore it makes it more likely that felony cases get dismissed."

The court's news release said, "While the Public Defender's Office is declaring itself unavailable to accept new clients, the court is facing an unprecedented number of misdemeanor cases, most of which must be brought to trial within 45 days."

"As a result, the court has kept defendants in custody, continuing their cases day-to-day, awaiting an available attorney," the release said. "Consistent with constitutional mandates, the court will be required to release some defendants from pre-trial custody because they do not have an attorney to represent them."

To manage the volume, the court will prioritize cases in the following order: in-custody felonies, in-custody misdemeanors, out-of-custody felonies, out-of-custody misdemeanors.

If judicial and attorney resources remain insufficient, some cases may be dismissed "in the interests of justice," the court said.

The court said judges will evaluate each case individually, taking into account the seriousness of the charges, public safety risks and the availability of counsel. The decision reflects the judiciary's obligation under both the California and U.S. Constitutions to ensure indigent criminal defendants have legal representation before they can be tried.

The announcement comes as the court grapples with an unprecedented backlog of misdemeanor cases, most of which must be brought to trial within 45 days under state law, the release said. In most of those cases, defendants are out of custody.

The yearly number of misdemeanor cases prosecuted by the district attorney almost doubled to 4,192 in 2024, compared to the previous year, according to her office's database.

San Francisco Superior Court's Criminal Case Dashboard shows that the number of arraignments increased by 57% from 2021 to 2024.

The public defender's office statement added, "In May 2025, the Public Defender's Office alerted the Court that we would be declaring unavailable one day per week in misdemeanor cases and select felony matters. This decision reflected the fact that our caseloads far exceeded those of our peers in the Bay Area as well as prevailing caseload standards from the American Bar Association. Even with taking this step, our caseloads have not decreased to a manageable level."