State Supreme Court to weigh S.F. courts’ COVID closures

The state Supreme Court will decide whether San Francisco’s courts can be sued by the city’s public defender and taxpayers for delaying hundreds of criminal trials during the pandemic by allegedly refusing to make courtrooms available.

A state appeals court had ruled in June that the suit could proceed and that Public Defender Mano Raju and three taxpayers could seek judicial orders to reserve more courtrooms for criminal trials. The state’s high court set that ruling aside Wednesday and voted unanimously to take up the case and decide the issue for all California courts.

According to the suit, filed in September 2021, more than 400 criminal defendants in San Francisco had been waiting for trials for more than 60 days, the usual legal deadline, and 178 of those defendants were being held in jail, some for more than a year.

The city’s courts, like those elsewhere in the state, halted jury trials in March 2020 after Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency because of COVID-19. When the courts reopened three months later, the suit said, 11 courtrooms were available in the Hall of Justice, at 850 Bryant St., but judges reopened only four of them and broadcast videos of their proceedings to four vacant courtrooms.

While more courtrooms are now being used for trials, the suit said, judges are still refusing to make enough courts available for criminal cases. The suit seeks to require San Francisco’s courts to give priority to criminal cases and to make all courtrooms at the Civic Center courthouse, at 400 McAllister St., available for criminal trials.

State law allows judges to delay felony trials more than 60 days for “good cause,” and courts have rejected individual defendants’ claims that COVID delays have violated their constitutional right to a speedy trial. This case may determine whether judges in the state have a legal duty to give preference to criminal cases when deciding use of their courtrooms, particularly when emergencies like COVID have delayed numerous trials.

The First District Court of Appeal found such an obligation in its June 8 ruling reinstating Raju’s suit, which had been dismissed by a lower court.

The suit’s allegations, if proved, could show that many months into the pandemic, the Superior Court’s judges “failed to take feasible, commonsense measures to devote adequate resources to criminal trials, and thus failed to adequately prioritize criminal cases over civil matters,” the court said in a 3-0 ruling. It was written by Jenna Whitman, an Alameda County Superior Court judge temporarily assigned to the appeals court.

But in May 2022, another First District panel, in a suit by Raju’s office, refused to lift COVID-19 restrictions that had delayed trials for more than 400 criminal defendants in San Francisco.

The San Francisco Superior Court appealed the June 8 ruling, arguing that the judges had acted within their authority to assign courtrooms for trials, and that there was no legal basis for the suit.

In a statement Thursday, Jessie Seyfer, a spokesperson for Raju, said, “Courts are not above the law. We believe the S.F. Superior Court violated clear California Supreme Court precedent by needlessly leaving usable courtrooms empty while people sat in jail without trial.”

The case is Raju v. Superior Court, S281001.