san francisco — A judge fined San Francisco’s public defender $26,000 for ignoring a January order to stop dismissing cases — a pattern that critics say is straining the city’s justice system.
Public Defender Manu Raju It began declining to represent some defendants in new felony and misdemeanor cases last May, citing a massive workload caused by increased prosecutions and insufficient staffing. He wants money for more lawyers or for the court to dismiss some cases brought by District Attorney Brooke Jenkins.
“Every member of my team could cut their workload in half, and they would still have more than a full-time job,” Raju told the Associated Press.
San Francisco Superior Court Judge Harry Dorfman ordered Raju in January to stop dismissing cases, but Raju refused, and Dorfman this month found him in contempt. On Tuesday, he fined him $1,000 for each of the initial 26 cases he has dismissed since that order and scheduled another hearing in April to add more fines. Raju said he plans to appeal and continue dismissing some new cases.
Public defenders and staff from across California packed the courtroom to support Raju. He told the judge that the heavy workload affected the quality of representation his office could provide, violating the human rights of defendants and negatively impacting his employees.
“People and their families are harmed when we cannot provide the representation we should, and our employees suffer residual trauma,” he said.
The move puts Raju, California’s only elected and progressive public defender, at odds with Jenkins, who has said his actions disrupt the justice system and could lead to violent defendants being released due to a lack of legal representation.
“Their goal is to disrupt order, create chaos, and stifle the courtroom,” Jenkins said.
Courts from Oregon to Massachusetts Plagued by too few public defenders for years, the Oregon Supreme Court issued a ruling in February that will result in more than 1,400 cases being dismissed for lack of timely representation. But the public spat between Raju, the prosecutor, and the judge, is unusually controversial and political.
This comes after years of controversy in San Francisco over public safety. Mayor Daniel Lowry was elected in 2024 on a promise to restore the city’s damaged image after years of negative national attention, and pledged to clean up the city’s streets. His election came after voters in 2022 recalled District Attorney Chesa Boudin out of frustration over what they saw as his lax approach to street crime. He was replaced by Jenkins and prosecutions intensified — 8,000 felony and misdemeanor cases were filed last year, compared to about 5,600 cases filed in 2021.
Raju is using the filibuster as leverage during a tough budget fight and does not represent a real dispute over public safety policy, said Jason McDaniel, a political science professor at San Francisco State University who is writing a book on San Francisco politics. Lowry is dealing with a budget shortfall of $400 million.
“If this were really a political fight and not a fight for resources, this would be something that I think voters would be really upset about because the more progressive positions on law enforcement have received a lot of pushback from the majority of voters in San Francisco,” McDaniel said.
Violent crime rates in San Francisco are among the lowest in recent years, but drug-related crimes, petty theft, and other low-level crimes are still prevalent. Jenkins said prosecution rates have returned to pre-pandemic levels because, unlike her predecessor, she is enforcing every law.
The increase in prosecutions for minor crimes, coupled with the increasing volume of digital and video evidence that needs to be reviewed, is creating an unsustainable workload, Raju said. He accused Jenkins of “obstructing the courts” and said his lawyers work long hours, skip vacations and suffer serious health effects from their enormous workloads.
Raju pointed to a 2023 national study on attorney general workload conducted by the RAND Corporation that found excessive workloads violate ethics rules and cause harm to defendants. He said his attorneys average 60 felony and 135 misdemeanor cases at a time, far higher than the up to 40 felonies and 80 misdemeanor cases recommended in a 2025 study by the Deason Center for Criminal Justice Reform at Southern Methodist University.
He said heavy workloads among public defenders often result in defendants waiting longer than necessary to resolve their cases. So far, he said, no one has been left without legal representation in San Francisco because his office coordinates with private attorneys contracted with the city. The San Francisco Bar Association, which stepped in to represent some of the defendants, told the judge that its attorneys were now at capacity and could not accept new clients.
Dorfman decided that Raju’s office had enough staff to handle the workload and indicated that some of the supervising public defenders could take on more cases. He also said the public defender’s office should stop assigning attorneys to some criminal cases, which Raju said is sometimes done for training purposes.
Studies that suggest limits on the number of public defender cases cited by Raju are worthy of study, but “are not California law,” Dorfman wrote in his January ruling.
He said in court on Tuesday that while he found that Raju had acted in good faith before the court, “that does not mean that I will back down or stick with the court order.”
He added: “The court is not a spectator in this matter.” “The law requires the court to appoint a public defender when necessary.”