Amnesty granted to people sentenced to work program halted by COVID-19

More than 1,600 people who were sentenced to a Santa Clara County sheriff’s weekend work program in the first year of the pandemic, but were unable to fulfill their sentences because the program was suspended for safety reasons, have been cleared of their obligations in an act of amnesty by the court.

Superior Court Judge Eric Geffon’s order, signed Thursday, removes a limbo status for hundreds of people whose work sentences were set to begin during the shutdown period. They were still technically on the hook for their sentences even though they had no chance to show up. After the program resumed, there was no capacity to clear the backlog amid scores of new incoming sentences.

“This is obviously a unique and extenuating circumstance that through no fault of these defendants, they find themselves in a position where for over a year they were unable to serve the sentence that the court had ordered,” Geffon said.

Work sentences that were set to begin from March 17, 2020, to May 1, 2021, when the sheriff’s program was offline, will be considered fulfilled under Geffon’s order. He noted that the Sheriff’s Office had used its discretion to credit the weekend work sentences — which entail community improvement duties like park and roadside cleanup — of people who already had started but couldn’t finish their terms.

That created legal uncertainty for at least 1,600 people, who risked becoming the subject of bench and arrest warrants for not having fulfilled their sentences. Geffon’s order also bars warrants from being issued for those affected and withdraws any warrants that already had been created.

Assistant District Attorney David Angel said that Thursday’s order — which was worked out among the DA’s Office, Public Defender’s Office, Independent Defense Counsel’s Office, pretrial services and county counsel — avoids the “greater injustice of continuing to somewhat rotely apply a punishment and penalty that would no longer serve a public safety purpose.”

Sylvia Perez-McDonald, independent defense counsel director, called the order “an appropriate and necessary action.” Assistant Public Defender Damon Silver added that the amnesty reached Thursday will have a particular impact on disenfranchised people who are more likely to interact with the courts.

“As we all know, the criminal legal system consistently disproportionately impacts our most vulnerable communities, including communities of color and communities in poverty,” Silver said after the hearing. “This is not only a practical response to the pandemic but because of this context it’s an act of race equity work, and I applaud all the agencies for collaborating to make it happen.”

Matthew Fisk, pretrial services director, spoke at Thursday’s hearing to ensure that Geffon’s order would apply to people whose work sentences fell in the 2020-2021 window but had not been among the 1,608 people expressly identified as eligible for relief. Geffon affirmed that it would.

“This is really progressive and will really help out these 1,600 families,” Fisk said.