For the first time in more than a decade, the San Francisco public defender’s office is so overloaded with cases that it has closed up shop.
The office will decline new clients on one business day each week.
Wrongfully arrested? You might have to cool your heels in the clink a little longer. Got robbed and want the perp prosecuted quick? Too bad. The alleged criminal is guaranteed defense under the Constitution, so you can twiddle your thumbs, thanks much.
Matt Gonzalez, chief attorney of the public defender’s office, penned a letter to San Francisco Superior Court Presiding Judge Rochelle C. East saying the office would move to declare itself “unavailable,” a legal maneuver.
Public Defender Mano Raju says the office is overwhelmed with drug cases.
Raju explained the move in a Board of Supervisors hearing Wednesday. The meeting was aimed at addressing District Attorney Brooke Jenkins’ budget, but Raju took the floor.
“We’re in a position where we can’t take any more cases,” he told the supervisors. “If we keep on taking cases, we’re not going to be able to provide the representation our clients deserve, and it’s going to have a negative impact on the just outcome of the case.”
Raju said his office has tackled a 40% increase in felony filings since 2020 and handled more trials last year “than when we started keeping track.”
There were 200 more arraignments in the first four months of 2025 than in the same period last year, Gonzalez wrote in his letter to East. Raju said every attorney in his office is working overtime, often unpaid.
It’s easy to see why. Mayor Daniel Lurie arrived in office with a pocketful of promises, including a public safety mandate. That has translated to more arrests on Sixth Street, in the Mission, and in Jefferson Park, to name just a few high-profile fentanyl busts. While the busts haven’t all yielded prosecutions, on the whole, charges have risen enough to drive a greater need for courtroom resources.
Lurie is trying to close an $820 million budget gap by June 1, when his budget proposal is due, but that’s coming into conflict with his pledge to improve public safety. The public defender’s office is among the city agencies that pushed back on Lurie’s mandated cuts.
Jenkins, in a scathing letter penned in late April, pushed back on Lurie’s bid to cut more than $5.4 million from her office. The DA’s office, like the public defender’s, has been burdened with more cases.
In his budget request to the mayor, the public defender called out what he sees as a glaring disparity between funding for prosecutors versus constitutionally mandated defense. Raju’s budget is less than half that of the district attorney, he wrote.
“Although every person accused of a crime is presumed innocent, San Francisco’s criminal legal system, in practice, operates as if it presumes guilt, as reflected by its current and historic funding allocations,” the public defender’s office wrote.
The contrast is clear from their headquarters.
The district attorneys began their move into a gleaming, spacious $134 million building on Rhode Island street in 2019. The 340 district attorney staffers enjoy 118,000 square feet of space. The public defenders, by contrast, cram 210 employees into a 39,000-square-foot space they first occupied in 1989, when the staff was half the size. Two to four attorneys are packed into each windowless office.
The last time the public defender’s office declared itself “unavailable” was in 2009, under the late Jeff Adachi. He was short two paralegals, positions he said were vital to preparing cases.
In an interview with The Standard, Raju made the law-and-order case for fully funding the public defender’s office.
“If you’re a person who just wants, as quickly as possible, a trial or some resolution, that can’t happen unless the public defender’s office is ready,” Raju said. “We are constitutionally obligated to review all the police reports, do our investigation, leave no stone unturned, file every appropriate motion.”
Jenkins agreed the public defender’s office needs to move through its cases for the criminal justice system to work smoothly. The DA’s office has more than 7,000 pending cases, the most in years, Jenkins said in a statement to The Standard.
“When Public Defenders are not ready to go to trial or proceed (often on cases many years old) those cases languish in our office driving up our pending case numbers and case loads. It causes frustration and retraumatization in our victims,” she wrote.
Lurie’s spokesperson, Charles Lutvak, said keeping San Franciscans safe is the mayor’s “number one goal.” The mayor’s budget will thread the needle of both closing the historic deficit and building on recent decreases in crime, he said.
“We appreciate the public defender’s partnership in this urgent work to get fentanyl off the streets and keep our city safe,” Lutvak said.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Jenkins cocked an eyebrow at the Board of Supervisors inviting Raju to speak when the topic on the agenda was her office’s budget.
“I find it fascinating that the public defender is here today. I can’t believe that that is by happenstance,” Jenkins said.
Speaking to the supervisors, Jenkins claimed there is a disparity between the offices’ funding because the DA handles all of its cases, while the public defender can kick cases to attorneys called “conflict counsel” provided by the Bar Association of San Francisco.
The public defender’s office contends that this costs taxpayers more money, and that the conflict counsel is also facing higher caseloads.
The Bar Association of San Francisco did not respond to a request for comment.
Jenkins claimed the public defender’s office uses two attorneys for most felony cases, while her office typically uses one.
“That contributes to caseloads for other attorneys being high,” she said. The public defender denied this claim.
One speaker during the public comments seemed intent on cooling the temperature in the room: Matt Beltramo, an assistant DA and officer of the San Francisco Municipal Attorneys Association, a labor organization representing attorneys working for city agencies.
He tied their headaches together.
“We DAs, like the public defenders, are extremely stretched,” he said. “And every day we’re called upon to do more and more with less.”