San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
A defender with grace and grit
San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi never shied away from unpopular causes he was convinced were righteous. In fact, he seemed to relish his principled fights with the status quo in City Hall or the criminal justice system.
Yet he always operated with such unfailing grace and determined due diligence that many of his adversaries were among his greatest admirers.
With Adachi’s death Friday at age 59, San Francisco has lost a relentless champion for social justice, fiscal responsibility and decency in politics.
From the day he took office in January 2003, Adachi made the office an incubator of innovation on the issues of reducing recidivism, protecting the rights of undocumented immigrants and exposing and eradicating police misconduct. He was among the earliest and most determined advocates of replacing cash bail with a system that assesses an inmate’s release from jail solely on the basis of flight risk or danger to the community.
Adachi was a progressive with the self-confidence to define the label on his own terms. In 2010, Adachi drew the ire of the city’s powerful labor unions by pushing Proposition B to require city workers to contribute more to their pension and retiree health benefits. Adachi argued — correctly and boldly — that the city was incurring long-term obligations that would eventually squeeze the budget for essential services. His measure lost, but the campaign forced city leaders to confront the unfunded liabilities, and that ultimately led to more modest reforms.
His maverick stance on fiscal accountability probably poisoned any chance Adachi had of advancing to the mayor’s office. He finished sixth out of 16 mayoral candidates in 2011.
Our editorial board did not endorse him in that race but nevertheless saluted his substance and resolve.
“Talk about courage,” we wrote on Oct. 12, 2011. “One of the city’s most liberal politicians took on labor over the bedrock issue of pensions . ... He’s been unfairly vilified by much of the city’s political establishment for daring to raise the pension problem that others preferred to ignore . ... His independence is unassailable. The question is whether he has become too divisive a figure to be an effective mayor.”
Adachi, the state’s only elected public defender, was not one to merely lead from behind his desk or beneath the glow of television lights at a news conference. He seized opportunities to personally defend clients at trial. His courtroom skills were impressive, and he liked to say that his appearances sent a message to his staff about the importance of their work in representing more than 20,000 defendants a year.
As the son of parents who had spent time in an internment camp during World War II, civil rights were always at the forefront of Adachi’s endeavors. It was reflected in the three documentaries he produced, starting with “The Slanted Screen” (2006), about the stereotyped portrayal of Asian Americans in Hollywood films.
Jeff Adachi’s life was defined by passion and principle. His death leaves a huge void in the city he loved and the world he strove to change for the better.