San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Relentless defender of poor, powerless
For San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi, who died Friday night at age 59, keeping silent about injustice was never an option.
For Adachi, who spent decades defending people who were poor, forgotten, discriminated against and, all too often, guilty, it was society’s duty to stand up for all of them.
“Prosecutors, with near unlimited resources and the full backing of the government, are trying to take away a citizen’s freedom. That’s a big deal and something we want to get right,” Adachi said in a 2014 opinion piece he wrote for the Sacramento Bee. “Defense attorneys safeguard against vigilantism, kangaroo courts and mob justice.”
Shortly before 6 p.m. Friday, paramedics were dispatched to a home on the first block of Telegraph Place, a residential street just west of Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill, on the report of a medical emergency, Fire Department officials
said.
They found Adachi unresponsive and rushed him to California Pacific Medical Center on Buchanan Street, where he was pronounced dead at 6:54 p.m. Although officials believe he suffered a heart attack, the medical examiner still has to determine an official cause of death.
Once hospital officials determined the man was Adachi, they notified police, who began an investigation into the death, several sources said. No information has been released about the investigation.
Adachi was raised in Sacramento. His parents and grandparents spent time during World War II in a Japanese relocation camp in Arkansas. From a young age, he enjoyed solitary pursuits, like writing and reading, he told The Chronicle in 2010.
He studied business at Sacramento City College before transferring to UC Berkeley. He graduated from UC Hastings College of the Law in 1985. A year later, the Public Defender’s Office hired him.
Adachi had been sworn in for another term as a public defender in January after running unopposed in November’s election.
Accolades came in from across the state after the news of his death, including many from people who had plenty of issues with Adachi over the years.
“San Francisco lost a dedicated servant of the public (Friday) night in Jeff Adachi,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “He was passionate about fighting for fairness and leading the charge on progressive criminal justice policy.”
In 2009, however, Newsom, then San Francisco’s mayor, battled Adachi over a proposed $1.9 million cut in the public defender’s budget, Adachi arguing it would force him to lay off as many as 15 attorneys. While Newsom had asked every city department to come up with 25 percent cuts to balance the budget, Adachi instead sent in a department budget with a $1.7 million increase.
“The mayor’s proposed budget is shortsighted,” he said. “I do not control the number of criminal cases that are filed.” When Newsom refused to fill two paralegal slots earlier that year, Adachi refused to assign his attorneys to complex legal cases, saying they required resources he couldn’t provide.
“Chief defenders cannot permit a level of substandard representation of the poor that would otherwise be unacceptable for paying clients,” he said in an opinion piece he wrote for the Recorder, a legal newspaper.
Sen. Kamala Harris, who knew Adachi for 30 years from her work as a San Francisco prosecutor, district attorney and state attorney general, called the public defender “an outspoken fighter for justice and police accountability and a fierce and talented advocate for his clients,” adding that Adachi “never stopped working for a justice system that provided equal dignity and never stopped believing in our power to make it better.”
Harris’ words were less kind in 2010, when she accused Adachi of “playing politics with public safety” when he sought to have her turn over the names of police officers with arrest records or misconduct histories whose trial testimony had helped to convict defendants.
Adachi was scornful of Harris’ argument that her office needed to review the cases first to ensure that the police officers’ privacy rights were upheld.
Harris “is putting the privacy interests of police officers who have misconduct records and who have been convicted of crimes above the rights of citizens to a fair and honest trial,” Adachi said.
Adachi’s aggressive efforts in defense of his clients didn’t diminish when Harris became attorney general. In 2016, he slammed her for not immediately taking tougher measures after a series of fatal shootings by San Francisco police officers.
“It’s mind-boggling to me why the attorney general has refused to step in. Particularly when San Francisco is suffering,” Adachi said. “Could this last shooting have been prevented had the AG not refused to step in? Her office’s involvement would have signaled to police that there will be increased oversight.”
In defense of his clients, all of them poor and many of them people of color, Adachi was willing to take on anyone, regardless of the potential political costs.
Jeff Adachi was “an outspoken fighter for justice and police accountability and a fierce and talented advocate for his clients.” He “never stopped working for a justice system that provided equal dignity.”
Sen. Kamala Harris