OLD_San Francisco Public Defender's Office

SAN FRANCISCO – Paul Addis, once accused of attempting to set fire to San Francisco’s historic Grace Cathedral has been released from custody after pleading no contest to reduced misdemeanor charges.

Addis had originally been charged with a felony count of attempted arson, felony charges of possessing explosives and incendiary devices, and a misdemeanor count of altering an imitation firearm. Addis pled no contest to misdemeanor charges of fireworks possession and altering an imitation firearm, in return for three years of court probation. All other charges were dismissed.

According to Addis’ Deputy Public Defender Tal Klement, “He only intended to set off some fireworks. He didn’t have any intention of harming anybody or damaging Grace Cathedral.”

Read the Bay City Newswire article here.
Read the San Francisco Chronicle coverage here.

As published in  The Recorder, February 4, 2008.
by Evan Hill

Prompted by a case out of the public defender’s office, a San Francisco supervisor is pushing to change the rules on accessing the city’s surveillance camera footage.

Gerardo Sandoval, a former deputy public defender, presented the legislation to the board on Jan. 8, but off-stage wrangling has stalled the bill in several meetings since.

The changes to the Administrative Code recommended by Sandoval and the board’s public safety committee would give the public defender and other defense attorneys easier access to camera footage, and require the city to hold on to the tapes longer. While the public defender favors the changes, the district attorney’s office says that discovery is adequate.

A city budget analyst has estimated that it would cost $1.55 million for the Department of Telecommunications and Information Services, which records and stores the footage, to hold tapes for 30 days, according to Sandoval. But he has said that figure was simply a “verbatim” echo of the DTIS’ request, and that the analysis needed “much more due diligence.”

The impetus for amending the code came from a case involving two men accused of robbery and held in custody for 69 days, the length of time it took the PD’s office to access the surveillance footage that exonerated them, Sandoval said.

According to a press release from the PD’s office, Neil Butler and Robert Dillon were arrested on Aug. 6, 2007, in connection with an early-morning robbery at 14th and Mission streets. But, the release adds, city surveillance cameras two blocks away, at 16th and Mission streets, showed them at that location at the time of the crime.

City policy at the time prevented Deputy PD Eric Quandt from getting the tapes directly, the release says, and dictated they be destroyed in seven days. But Quandt convinced the Department of Emergency Management to preserve the tapes while he requested them from police. The prosecutor on the case eventually reviewed the footage and dropped the charges, the release adds.

“We learned that there was no way for a defense attorney to obtain the tapes without securing the cooperation of the police department,” PD Jeff Adachi wrote in an e-mail to The Recorder.

“I think the issue here is whether the state has a duty to provide reasonable access to crime surveillance tapes when they might prove a person’s innocence,” he added.

The proposed changes to the law would allow defense attorneys with pending cases, not just police, to make written requests to the city to get a copy of a tape.

The law would also require the city to keep the tapes for 30 days instead of the current 14-day maximum.

That doesn’t sit well with the DA’s office.

“There is a well-established discovery process that governs the introduction and sharing of evidence in criminal cases,” said Chief of Policy Tim Silard, adding that nothing in the rules of discovery precludes the defense from getting the footage.

But PD spokeswoman Lea Villegas wrote in an e-mail that holding onto tapes for 30 days is an essential method of preserving evidence when arrests can come late and bureaucracies often move slowly.

Allowing defense attorneys to request the tapes outside the discovery process would make the footage available to a far wider group of lawyers than if it were only available through discovery, a fact that troubles some in law enforcement.

“That’s a valid concern,” Sandoval said. “But it has to be weighed against the fact that currently tapes are destroyed after 14 days, and many times cases are not charged until well after that period.”

As published in The Recorder, December 18, 2007.

By Mike McKee.

Eighteen years after Dennis Lawley was sentenced to death, evidence literally unearthed last week in a field outside Modesto could bolster defense lawyers’ argument that their client is truly innocent.

Scott Kauffman, a staff attorney at the San Francisco-based California Appellate Project, confirmed Monday that four days earlier he dug up an “extremely corroded” handgun he believes was used by Kenneth Stewart’s real killer on Jan. 22, 1989.

If the gun, which is being examined by the Department of Justice, turns out to be a Smith & Wesson .357-caliber revolver, Kauffman will introduce it as evidence to rebut the state’s claim that the murder weapon was a Ruger .357-caliber magnum pistol found at Lawley’s home two days after the murder.

“This gun should remove any doubt the [state] Supreme Court might have about what it needs to do in this case,” Kauffman said.

Kauffman will find out soon enough. Oral arguments in Lawley on Habeas Corpus, S089463, are set for Jan. 9 in San Francisco. Late last week, Kauffman filed a motion to expand the court record to include evidence of the gun he found.

Sacramento-based Deputy Attorney General David Eldridge, who will argue the state’s position before the court, remained skeptical about the last-minute find.

“We have no indication that it has any connection to our case,” he said Monday. “All we know is it appears [Kauffman] said he found it in a field. [Justice Department examiners] are treating it like any other citizen turning over any gun they found in a field — or, at least, that they said they found in a field.”

Kauffman acknowledged there might be some suspicions because he was alone when he found the gun. If the gun turns out to be a Smith & Wesson, Kauffman believes it’s a crucial find that will “demolish” the AG’s case — even though everyone already agrees Lawley didn’t pull the trigger. That was done by Brian Seabourn, who drove Kenneth Stewart to a remote site outside Modesto and shot him to death as he begged for mercy.

Lawley, however, is on death row rather than Seabourn because prosecutors convinced jurors Lawley paid Seabourn to make the hit in retaliation for a beating Lawley had suffered at Stewart’s hands a few days earlier. Lawley, who has been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, represented himself at his 1989 murder trial.

Kauffman and San Francisco Deputy Public Defender Bicka Barlow, Kauffman’s co-counsel and wife, contend Lawley is innocent and that prosecutors — including recently deceased Stanislaus County District Attorney James Brazelton — lied and suppressed evidence to secure Lawley’s conviction.

They claim Seabourn snuffed Stewart on orders of the Aryan Brotherhood gang, which allegedly solicited the murder from behind bars because Stewart refused to make financial payoffs to the prison gang while he was imprisoned himself.

Seabourn, convicted of second-degree murder in Stewart’s death and now serving multiple life sentences at the California Correctional Institution at Tehachapi, has insisted from the start that Lawley was not responsible for Stewart’s death.

“With actual knowledge of these facts, Brazelton argued to Dennis Lawley’s guilt jury that ‘no one but Dennis Lawley had a motive to kill’ Stewart,” Kauffman said last week. “If this case isn’t a miscarriage of justice, then it doesn’t exist.”

The gun Kauffman found could complicate matters for prosecutors because Seabourn has testified that after killing Stewart he buried the murder weapon in a field near the intersection of Carpenter and Robertson roads just outside Modesto. That’s where Kauffman went digging last week after the Supreme Court granted him funds for a forensic metal search.

Kauffman said he’d tried before to get approval to take Seabourn to the field for a search, but was turned down by a judge.

Deputy AG Eldridge has until Friday to file a response. In earlier court papers, he argued there was “no credible evidence” establishing Lawley’s innocence, “much less … evidence which both would command the acceptance of any reasonable jury and which undermines the entire prosecution case and points unerringly to innocence or reduced culpability.”

The California Supreme Court upheld (.pdf) Lawley’s death sentence on Jan. 24, 2002, despite Seabourn’s claim.

But only 34 days after affirming Lawley’s sentence, the high court issued an order to show cause why Lawley shouldn’t go free based on defense attorneys’ arguments of innocence.

Following evidentiary hearings, a Stanislaus County judge issued a report in 2005 finding Lawley had not proven his innocence, but noting that several people had motives for the murder.

Much of the defense presented by Kauffman and Barlow rests on allegations that Brazelton — a deputy DA at the time — “undermined the search for truth” by successfully suppressing evidence that the Aryan Brotherhood orchestrated Stewart’s murder.

“Mr. Brazelton knew there was credible evidence Seabourn committed the murder on behalf of the Aryan Brotherhood,” Kauffman and Barlow wrote in court papers. “The words ‘Aryan Brotherhood’ were never uttered before [Lawley’s] jury.”

Lawley had tried to admit evidence of the Aryan Brotherhood defense, but the trial judge rejected it as hearsay. Justice Janice Rogers Brown, writing separately in Lawley’s direct appeal, described this as “a classic example of the hazards of self-representation.”

In court papers, the defense quotes Seabourn testifying that he picked up Stewart under the pretense of planning to rob drug dealers, a favorite pastime of Stewart’s.

In his briefs, Deputy AG Eldridge questioned the credibility of Seabourn and other defense witnesses — many of them former or current members of the Aryan Brotherhood — during the evidentiary hearing.

“The evidence produced by [Lawley] provides no motive for the witnesses at trial to have lied in their testimony,” Eldridge wrote. “Rather, [Lawley’s] current witnesses merely testified, and not credibly, to a contradictory factual scenario.”

The case presents unique problems for the defense. During trial Lawley told jurors he had been framed for Stewart’s murder because he aspired to go down in history as the “Beast of Revelations.”

But being schizophrenic doesn’t justify being sent to death row for a crime one didn’t commit, Kauffman said.

“It is time for that miscarriage of justice to be made right,” he said.

San Francisco, CA – John M., 23 years old, was acquitted yesterday of robbery and aggravated assault with great bodily harm stemming from an incident in which he was accused of physically attacking and turning his dog on the complaining witness, Adam McFarland. Each count constituted a strike, and the charges carried a potential sentence of 16 years in prison.

The incident occurred on September 6, 2007 at around midnight near the intersection of Powell and O’Farrell Streets. John M., who testified on his own behalf, said that he was walking his dog when he approached two acquaintances who were arguing with McFarland. John M.said that his acquaintances accused McFarland of robbing them. McFarland fled, followed by the other individuals. John M.’s dog broke loose during the commotion and attacked McFarland. A barefoot John M. ran after the dog and successfully restrained it.

However, Lieutenant Kitt Crenshaw, a 30-year veteran of the San Francisco Police Department, testified that he was on his coffee break when he saw McFarland being chased and then bitten repeatedly by the dog. He also testified that John and one other individual then attacked McFarland and robbed him of his wallet before he pulled his gun and initiated the arrest. According to Lieutenant Crenshaw, the accomplice ran away and was never identified.

The jury found John M.’s testimony more credible, noting that Lieutenant Crenshaw’s statements at the time of the incident and during the preliminary hearing differed from his testimony at trial. The jury also did not understand how the defendant could have simultaneously kicked the complaining witness and restrained the irate dog. The jury also noted that Lieutenant Crenshaw embellished his own testimony, first saying the he saw the defendant release the dog and then recanting.

McFarland, who also testified, admitted on the stand to being drunk at the time of the incident. He could not remember what provoked the attack, but he did testify to being attacked by African American men. John M. is white.

“How is it that someone who has never been in trouble his entire life can find himself in a situation where he is facing 16 years in prison,” asks John M.’s attorney Deputy Public Defender Tal Klement. “He was accused of chasing down, kicking, and robbing someone, while successfully restraining an angry dog, all the time with barefeet. I am satisfied that the jury was able to see the truth in this case helping to set this young man free. If your looking for legal help with a dog attack please contact a Dog Bite Lawyer such as Batta Fulkerson.”

Attorney Kyle Shriner, a senior associate at Holme, Roberts & Owen and participant in the Public Defender Loaner Program, 2nd chaired the case.

John M. had only lived in San Francisco for one and a half months before the incident occurred. His parents drove from rural Virginia to be at his trial and his mother testified to his non-violent nature. Animal Control released the dog to John M.’s relatives on December 1.

The mission of the Public Defender’s office is to provide vigorous, effective, competent and ethical legal representation to persons who are accused of crime and cannot afford to hire an attorney. Established in 1921, the San Francisco Public Defender has a long, proud history of providing top-notch representation to its clients, and championing programs that help people turn their lives around.

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