Public defenders join rallies, seek ‘transformative’ changes
Attorneys serve vast majority of indigent, minority defendants
Galvanized by the racial injustice they see people suffer at the hands of authorities, public defenders in the Bay Area joined their counterparts from throughout the state and country to protest police brutality, emphasizing that the people least served by the crim
inal justice system are routinely walking through their doors.
In Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and San Francisco counties, attorneys who by and large serve the vast majority of indigent and minority criminal defendants marched to their respective courthouses donning “Black Lives Matter” shirts and called for immediate, common sense measures to start chipping away at institutional inequities that plague their clients.
At some point during the demonstrations — organized by Bay Area Public Defenders for Racial Justice — everything came to a quiet, somber halt, as participants held an 8-minute, 46-second silence in honor of George Floyd, the length of time Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was seen pressing his knee on the neck of the handcuffed 46-year-old father.
“The truth of the state of this country is not new. The truth of systemic racism is not new,” said Santa Clara County deputy public defender Ashanti Mitchell. “But something feels different. People are paying attention now. People are listening now.”
Mitchell added that the broader public must shift from a mindset of “hope for change to a demand for change.”
Brendon Woods, the first black chief public defender in Alameda County and currently the only black chief public defender in California, led a rally at the Rene C. Davidson Courthouse in Oakland.
“In 1968 the Black Panthers protested on these very same steps and their 10-point plan demanded an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people,” Woods said in a statement prior to the Oakland demonstration. “Over 50 years later, it is a damn shame that we are here to make those same demands. We support the ac- tions of the protesters and demand an end to statesanctioned police violence against Black people. We have had enough.”
Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley lent her support to their cause, and announced that she is forming a “Fair and Equitable Policing and Prosecution Advisory Council,” presumably to improve equitable outcomes in the county’s criminal-justice system. She said in her statement that the council will draw “particularly from the African American community” in the county.
Will Brotherson, Mitchell’s colleague in the South Bay public defender’s office, said while the systemic issues that public defenders encounter on an everyday basis are massive, that shouldn’t be a deterrent from swiftly adopting safer practices.
He noted the “8 Can’t Wait” campaign, which entails directives like banning strangleholds, requiring deescalation and alternatives to deadly force, and improving the accountability and record-keeping of such incidents.
“More reform and transformative change is needed,” Brotherson said. “But there is common-sense police reform that can be done right now.”
His counterparts in Alameda County echo that idea, calling for the true end of cash bail in California — a 2018 Legislative bill to do that was halted and put on the November ballot — and backing a state bill to ban from jury selection the use of peremptory, or no-questions-asked, challenges based on race.
Changes like this, they said, could begin to melt away some of the institutionalized racism they say are commonplace in the courthouse.
“We see it over and over in our work, from the arbitrary arrests and abuse of black men at the hands of police to the exclusion of Black people on juries,” Alameda County Assistant Public Defender Jane Brown said in a statement.
Micael Estremera, a supervising deputy public defender in Santa Clara County, said the sentiment expressed at the rallies in the Bay Area and elsewhere revolve around one basic concept: Recognizing the humanity of black people and people of color.
“The problem is dehumanization. We’re viewed as less than, we’re viewed as animals,” he said. “Now, we kneel. When we go back into the courtrooms, we rise … and we will rise at every occasion to fight back.”