Murder charge in death of baby
San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin on Monday charged a man with murder in the death of a 7monthold boy, after declining to prosecute him in two domestic violence cases, and his office said it would review its policies to prevent similar tragedies.
Prosecutors charged Joseph Williams, 26, with murder and assault in the Apr. 20 death of Synciere Williams, a baby boy in his care who, prosecutors said, suffered blunt force trauma to the head.
Joseph Williams, a San Francisco resident, was arrested twice this year on suspicion of domestic violence involving a woman with whom he was in a relationship, but the District Attorney’s Office declined to file charges in either incident, saying the woman refused to cooperate with prosecutors and told police she had attacked Williams first.
“Given the lack of cooperation with prosecution, we were unable to move forward with either of those cases,” Rachel Marshall, a spokesperson in the District Attorney’s Office, said last week.
On Apr. 20, Williams brought the infant to the California Pacific Medical Center, where
staff declared the baby dead and reported signs of trauma to local authorities, San Francisco police said at the time. Homicide investigators dispatched to the hospital found probable cause to arrest Williams for homicide.
In a Sunday Chronicle column, several advocates for victims of domestic violence criticized the decision by the District Attorney’s Office to not charge Williams and said it should not matter if a victim refuses to cooperate.
Out of 131 felony domestic violence arrests in the last three months of 2020, Boudin’s office dismissed all but 13 cases. Five are still in review.
In a statement Monday, Marshall said “a recent opinion column in the San Francisco Chronicle has caused confusion about the District Attorney’s Office’s policy in charging domestic violence. To be clear, the Office charges cases even when a complaining witness does not cooperate, so long as the case can be proven otherwise.”
The District Attorney’s Office defended its decision to not pursue domestic violence charges saying it could not “ethically” file charges.
“We believe the available facts of these two cases supported the decision to not move forward with charges, but that is not enough,” Boudin’s office’s statement said. “In light of this tragedy, we will be reviewing all policies related to charging domestic violence crimes, including discussions with our law enforcement partners to ensure we are all using best practices to obtain admissible evidence and to support victims.”
Prosecutors are consulting “experts, law enforcement partners, and community advocates to develop concrete strategies to improve safety for all domestic violence victims and survivors in San Francisco,” the statement said. “We will work to review whether systems that are in place are sufficient to prevent more tragedies.”
The Chronicle also cited statistics provided by the District Attorney’s Office showing that prosecutors filed felony domestic violence charges in 15% of cases last year, down from previous administrations, which between 2016 and 2019 prosecuted the cases at a rate of 20% to 27%.
Boudin refuted the notion that his administration had altered how such cases are handled and said a veteran prosecutor had reviewed Williams’ prior arrests.
“Boudin has maintained the same longstanding practices around how the District Attorney’s Office evaluates domestic violence, and the office prosecutes cases when it has sufficient evidence to do so with or without victim cooperation,” the statement from his office said.