Lee Heidhues 8.29.2023
How convenient. The very same day a California Court of Appeal rules that then Assistant District Attorney Brooke Jenkins engaged in prosecutorial misconduct, now DA Brooke Jenkins files criminal charges against San Francisco city workers for corruption.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/san-francisco-city-hall-corruption-arrests-18336850.php
Talk about audacity. While her record of judicial misconduct implodes around her, London Breed’s hand picked successor to the man she wanted gone, Chesa Boudin, engages in a bit of prosecutorial jiu jitsu. Indicting people for misconduct on the same day she is rung up for misconduct herself.
Equally appalling is the unmistakable fact that her former boss, the man she drove from office and earned over 150K while calling herself a “volunteer,” pilloried Chesa Boudin for his alleged misguided priorities; i.e. prosecuting white collar crime. Falsely alleging Chesa Boudin was ignoring “more serious” offenses.
Excerpted from The San Francisco Standard 8.29.2023
Written by Jonah Owen Lamb Published Aug. 29, 2023 • 5:11pm
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins committed misconduct when, as an assistant DA under Chesa Boudin, she accused a defense lawyer of fabricating their case in order to fool the jury in a murder trial, according to a California Appeals Court ruling.
The misconduct took place during the closing arguments of the initial trial, after which Daniel Gudino was found guilty of murder, according to court documents. He was later found not guilty by way of insanity and sent to a mental institution.
Even after losing her bid to declare him sane, Jenkins sought to send Gudino to prison for life instead of to a mental health facility.
When the District Attorney’s Office declined to proceed with a retrial on the insanity portion of the case, Jenkins did not show up to court, according to transcripts. She resigned that same day, saying publicly that her superiors had undermined her.
Jenkins downplayed the ruling, which culminated an appeal related to the murder case. In a statement Tuesday, she said the misconduct in the fall 2021 trial was a minor mistake that did not impact the case’s outcome.
The trial of Daniel Gudino—who killed his mother in the throes of a mental health crisis that made him think she was a demon, according to records reviewed by The Standard—was the last case Jenkins tried before quitting her job. She said her decision to leave Boudin’s office to join the push to recall him stemmed in part from how her bosses handled that case.
However, the defense attorney at the center of the ruling says the findings send a message about what she called “ethical issues” at the top of the DA’s Office.
“It calls into question her ethics—and she is the head of the office,” said Deputy Public Defender Ilona Solomon Yañez, who defended Gudino. “There is something especially gratifying by the fact that part of the misconduct was impugning my integrity.”
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