One by one, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has picked off San Francisco Superior Court judges.
She’s challenged them all, and found success having them removed.
First it was Judge Anthony Kline, then Victor Hwang. Judges Carolyn Gold and Michelle Tong followed. All were either pushed from hearing criminal proceedings, or shunted off to other courts, in a torrent of legal maneuvers alleging prejudice, levied by prosecutors.
A writ filed Wednesday in a state appeals court claims Jenkins is undermining the judiciary and violating the rights of criminal defendants.
The district attorney hasn’t publicly stated her reasoning for the legal challenges but has been vocal in her critique of judges who, in her view, are soft on alleged criminals.
The writ, filed by Marsanne Weese, an attorney for a defendant whose time in court has been stalled, challenged this practice.
“It is in this climate that the elected District Attorney, in a distinctly Trump-esque manner, feels emboldened to publicly chastise judges by name for rulings she disagrees with,” Weese wrote. “Embarking on a campaign of intimidation against Superior Court judges, District Attorney is attempting to reshape the San Francisco criminal court to be more favorable towards her agenda.”
The matter centers on events in March, when prosecutors prevented Tong from hearing any criminal cases in her courtroom by claiming she was biased, successfully calling for her to be disqualified.
The writ was filed by David Hoglund — one of many defendants who was set to go before Tong — who claims his case was delayed as part of Jenkins’ policy to undermine the court by forcing it to reassign judges she does not approve of.
In a statement, the district attorney’s office said Jenkins is on solid legal ground.
“The San Francisco Superior Court denied Hoglund’s petition and found no error in the grant of the motion to disqualify Judge Tong or that it was unconstitutional to do so,” a spokesperson wrote. “We concur with the San Francisco Superior Court’s decision. Filing peremptory challenges by prosecutors, defense attorneys, and civil attorneys is a lawful, standard, and accepted practice.”
Hoglund’s attorney cries gamesmanship. Marsanne Weese, the defense attorney in the case who filed the suit, appealed the decision with the superior court and was shot down.
“This judge has never even sat in criminal court. So how can [Jenkins] state that this judge is biased when the judge has not done anything in criminal court?” Weese said.
Under state law, prosecutors are allowed to enter challenges on each case before a judge, forcing the court to provide a fresh judge without evidence of prejudice. Jenkins has turned the practice into policy. Every prosecutor who has come before Tong has made the same challenge, under oath.
Tong was a deputy public defender who was elected in 2020 and, until Jenkins’ challenge, was overseeing civil cases. She had not heard any criminal cases when she took the bench in Department 12 to hear Hoguland’s case.
Hoglund was arraigned in January and awaited preliminary hearings for drug misdemeanors before Tong’s court. Instead, Jenkins challenged Tong, leaving Hoglund to wait until the court found a new judge to hear his case.
Tong is the fourth judge to face such action by Jenkins, who has also railed against other judges in the press and on the steps of the courthouse.
In 2022, prosecutors challenged Kline’s oversight of juvenile court. Because he was a retired visiting judge, he was simply replaced. In June 2024, prosecutors challenged Hwang’s assignment over the misdemeanor master calendar, seeing him reassigned to a civil department. And in August 2024, prosecutors challenged Gold, who was assigned to preliminary hearings; she was eventually reassigned to family court.
Jenkins’ actions have been condemned by some in the legal community and led to a State Bar complaint filed earlier this year by LaDoris Hazzard Cordell, a retired Superior Court judge in Santa Clara County. In that complaint, Cordell claimed Jenkins’ attacks against judges amounted to interfering with the independence of the judiciary. The State Bar decided not to investigate the matter.
Cordell, who in March resigned from the DA’s Innocence Commission over the matter, cited several times Jenkins has publicly attacked judges.
At a protest in March last year, Jenkins thundered against a ruling by Judge Kay Tsenin that sent a man who had stabbed an elderly woman to mental health treatment. Subsequent death threats against Tsenin forced her to work remotely.
In another case, Jenkins posted on X that a ruling in January by Judge Gerardo Sandoval was an example of the court’s lax approach to public health.
Tong, who is still presiding over the same court, has yet to hear cases as prosecutors continue to claim bias. Defendants, meanwhile, have to wait for their cases to be assigned to another judge.
“At a time when the district attorney is complaining that cases are not moving forward quickly enough, they are essentially shutting down an entire court room and causing some people to remain in jail longer,” said Valerie Ibarra, spokesperson for the public defender’s office.
Jonah Lamb briefly worked under Tong at the Public Defenders Office.