A constitutional crisis in S.F. courts

City has no fix for pandemic-induced criminal trial backlog even as other Bay Area counties figure out solutions

When Steven Kloster was arrested in 2019, he expected to be released from jail and back home quickly. Yes, he was charged with two felonies and a misdemeanor for allegedly assaulting an elderly doctor — but he believed the incident to be a huge misunderstanding, blown out of proportion. If he could only explain to a judge what happened, he wouldn’t have to fear the gravity of the charges hanging over him.

But Kloster and his lawyer, Deputy Public Defender Kwixuan Maloof, would have to wait a long time to make that case. Kloster landed in San Francisco’s jail during long, systemwide delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. For 410 days he was locked up waiting for his trial. Once he finally reached a courtroom, the jury deliberated only a day and a half. His felony charges were dismissed. He was finally released in January after being given time served for a misdemeanor battery conviction that kept him locked up for a year longer than typical for that type of conviction.

Kloster’s case isn’t an isolated one in San Francisco. When the COVID-19 shutdown hit in March 2020, courts ceased functioning at their previous capacity and were unable to adhere to the Constitution’s Sixth Amendment, which grants anyone accused of a crime the right to a speedy trial. For criminal trials in California, that’s defined as 30 to 60 days after someone is arraigned. According to the San Francisco Public Defender’s office, however, as of early October, there are still 770 cases waiting in San Francisco’s Superior Court past their trial deadline. Of those, 150 people are locked in the county’s jails.

The city’s leadership, meanwhile, has largely been silent. A Board of Supervisors hearing called last year by Supervisor Hillary Ronen discussed the problem extensively and resulted in the opening of two civil courtrooms to criminal trials for people out of custody.

It still didn’t make a difference. When the hearing was held in December 2021, there were 451 cases past their trial deadline. The problem has only grown worse.

Ronen says local politicians’ hands are tied. “There are no purse strings to pull with the courts,” she told me. “We just have so little power over it.”

Other nearby counties, meanwhile, have figured this out. The San Mateo County Superior Court converted an exhibit hall at the County Event Center into three large courtrooms, where it handled jury assembly. That freed up rooms in the Redwood City courthouse for trials. As a result, for the past 18 months, San Mateo County has been up to date on trials.

San Francisco’s Superior Court has yet to make such an effort.

The effects of extended jail time can be devastating — not just for the individual, but for San Francisco’s efforts to keep people out of homelessness. Kloster, a former firefighter who grew up in Lower Nob Hill, lives with and cares for his 87-year-old mother, who suffers from schizophrenia. While he was in jail, his effort to get rehired by the Fire Department was paused. Now that he’s out, he’s struggling to pay what he owes in back rent, in addition to his current rent. The threat of eviction looms.

It’s ironic that San Francisco, a city clearly fed up with crime, is incapable of processing cases in a timely manner. Prosecutors press charges while knowing that cases may not head to trial for years, risking evidence growing stale and witnesses disappearing. Victims are not getting the closure they need. And jailing unconvicted people for months or years, causing them to lose their jobs, homes and community connections, is a great way to force people into committing crimes for survival once they’re released.

“Victims and defendants are entitled to a fair, just and speedy resolution in each case,” San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said in an email. “On their behalf, we are also frustrated by the delays. My office remains committed to doing everything in our power to help move trials through the courts expeditiously, while making fair offers to defendants that hold them accountable and deliver justice for victims and their families.”

Walk around the Hall of Justice on any given weekday and you’ll notice many of the courtrooms are dark. Figuring out why isn’t easy. At the beginning of the pandemic, as hearings and trials went online, ethical and technical challenges ensued. Video connections were sometimes spotty, and jurors struggled to assess the verifiability of witnesses through a screen. Recreating an entire courtroom infrastructure virtually took time.

But today, as proceedings are mostly back in person, the rationale for the backlog is unclear. There are rumors of judges taking long vacations and of lawyers with overwhelming caseloads. When I reached out to a spokesperson for the court, he declined to comment, beyond noting that “the court continues its commitment to justice by processing all cases as expeditiously as possible under the difficult circumstances presented by the pandemic.”

It was a boilerplate quote, given verbatim to other news outlets.

Rather than shrugging, other counties have spent money and resources fixing similar problems. Riverside County took several steps to address its backlog by assigning criminal cases to civil judges and immediately filling a courtroom with a new case if it becomes available mid-afternoon. Recently, judges made the controversial decision to dismiss hundreds of criminal cases that were past their trial deadline.

Float these ideas in San Francisco and all you hear are crickets.

The only meaningful effort to address this crisis has come from the Public Defender’s office, which over the past two years, has filed habeas petitions stating that the conditions of the county jails are unlivable. It has pushed to get misdemeanor cases dismissed due to ongoing delays. It has also held protests on the steps of the Hall of Justice.

Last year, Public Defender Mano Raju filed a lawsuit against the court, alleging that it was violating the law by failing to hold timely jury trials for nearly 400 people. That effort isn’t going well; a California judge claims that forcing a county to open courtrooms would be considered meddling, which is not permitted. The case is currently under appeal.

On Dec. 2, more than a dozen people, including public defenders, families of those locked up awaiting trial, and Kloster, who’d been in jail himself, appealed to the California Judicial Council, which sets policy for the state courts, to audit the Superior Court and try to figure out a way forward.

Peter Calloway, a deputy public defender who spoke to the council, said that among his clients there’s a sense of “utter hopelessness” — both for those in and out of jail awaiting trial. With trials scheduled and then delayed, it can take a toll; each time, people schedule childcare, time off work, and get emotionally prepared to be scrutinized by 12 jurors.

Calloway had one client who waited months after his trial date, going through rescheduling after rescheduling. “He found this process tremendously stressful,” Calloway told me, “And it was just a minor misdemeanor that the complaining witness didn’t even want prosecuted.”

As yet another trial date for his client approached, Calloway gave him a call to get things in order. He didn’t pick up, but his girlfriend did. He

had died of a heart attack, she said. And as she was not on the lease, she was now homeless and living in a shelter.

“Could we prove that the city effectively killed him? Probably not,” Calloway said. “But I’m very confident asserting that these delays played a very serious role.”

Trial delays have been written about many times in the past few years, often with the warning that the situation is about to get worse.

We’re at that moment. There’s a perfect storm brewing.

With the shift in district attorney from Chesa Boudin to Brooke Jenkins, police are making more arrests. That, combined with a lower diversion rate from Jenkins’ office and recently revoked plea deals for drug dealers, could easily increase the jail population, with rumors already circling that the Sheriff ’s Department may have to reopen a closed floor of cells to accommodate more people.

At the same time, staffing shortages in the Sheriff ’s Department are creating a dire situation inside the jails. Time outside cells is limited to 45 minutes a day. Programs have been cut. One inmate’s death may have been a suicide. Inmates are being given vitamin D to make up for the lack of sunshine and a suit over conditions is under way.

A new surge in COVID-19 cases is undoubtedly going to make cramped conditions even worse.

There’s a bizarre lack of urgency in fixing any of this. San Francisco has a tendency to view its many problems as intractable, to throw up its hands at the futility of fixing things, or, more commonly, ignore the situations it’s creating.

But this — a trial backlog — is fixable, as other counties have shown. Our main hurdle in this appears to be a lack of motivation.

The people who are currently incarcerated deserve a speedy trial, but so do the victims of crimes who are caught in purgatory, waiting for justice and closure.

Constitutional rights were created for a reason. Violating them, repeatedly, for years, is unacceptable.

Lea Suzuki/The Chronicle Stephen Kloster expected a speedy resolution to his 2019 arrest. He needed to be home to care for his mother, Gail Kloster. He was held for 410 days awaiting trial.