Members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors introduced a resolution Tuesday that urges state officials to reimburse the city $2 million in legal fees stemming from a controversial case.
In 2007, California Attorney General Jerry Brown pressed charges against eight men for the death of a San Francisco police sergeant, after San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris refused to prosecute. The total cost of legal fees to the city was $2 million.
San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi said the state should compensate the city because of its decision to prosecute. According to Adachi’s office, the Superior Court fees accounted for $1.7 million and $300,000 went toward attorney fees, expert witnesses, paralegals and investigators representing one of the defendants.
The men charged in the case, known as the San Francisco 8, drew international attention because of allegations of torture against the suspects back in 1975. Nobel Prize winners, including Desmond Tutu, the Board of Supervisors and the San Francisco Labor Council asked Brown to drop the charges.
According to an article in SF Weekly, the public defender’s office was forced to hire 13 outside lawyers because of conflict of interest rules. Adachi told the Public Press in September that outsourcing lawyers proved costly for the city — more than using the city’s own public defenders to try cases. A representative of the public defender’s office said private lawyers cost more because, unlike public defenders who are paid salaries, they charge for overtime and average 77 more days to try a case than lawyers in the public defender’s office.
A precedent was set in the trial of Scott Peterson, who was tried for murder in the disappearance and death of his pregnant wife, Adachi said in a statement. In 2005, the state reimbursed Stanislaus County 100 percent of the “extraordinary” legal expenses incurred.
Of the San Francisco 8, only one case is currently pending after two ended in plea bargain agreements and charges were dismissed against the other five.
