San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced earlier this month that 27-year-old Fantasy Decuir and 27-year-old Lamonte Mims received life without the possibility of parole for the July 16, 2017 killing of 71-year-old Ed French. “They often say justice delayed is justice denied, but not in this case,” Jenkins said. “I am grateful to the victim’s friends and family who have stood with us over the years as we fought for justice.”
To say French’s family and friends “stood with us” is an understatement.
I first interviewed French’s sister Lorrie French and Ed’s French’s partner, Brian Higginbotham, in February 2022 when they became concerned that then District Attorney Chesa Boudin was going to accept plea deals for the killers, and that legislation written by Boudin’s chief of staff may help free one of the accused.
The French family grew up in the Mission District where things weren’t always easy. After their older sister got married at 18, Lorrie, the second of five kids, raised her younger siblings. Despite facing adversity, all five children found success. Lorrie became a realtor in the city where she grew up. She and Ed remained close. “My brother was such a sweetheart. He’d see a little old lady with groceries, and he’d stop and give her a ride,” Lorrie said. “I called him Mr. San Francisco — he knew everything about the city and the architecture. He did car commercials, scouting locations and sometimes even directed them, and he did a lot for the film industry coming up from L.A. The head of the San Francisco Film Commission said, ‘Ed taught me the business.’ Everyone loved him.”
It was his passion for San Francisco’s iconic locales that brought the 71-year-old to Twin Peaks in the early morning hours of July 16, 2017. While photographing the sunrise, French was approached by a young man and a young woman and robbed of his camera at gunpoint. In video later obtained by the San Francisco Police Department, the woman is seen shooting French even though the man, who is holding French, had already stolen the camera. Afterward the two flee, but the man returns to grab the camera bag and is seen kicking French as he lies dying on the ground. A passing jogger called 911 and administered CPR to French until SFPD arrived on the scene. He was transported to a local hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.
[J]ustice, it should never take this long … something is very wrong with the system,” said Lorrie French, Ed French’s sister.
Less than two weeks later, on July 28, 2017 at approximately 10:19 a.m., an armed robbery took place at St. Mary’s Cathedral Square at Geary Boulevard and Gough Street where a 53-year-old male and a 33-year-old female victim were robbed of their camera and wallet at gunpoint. Investigators from SFPD’s Northern Station Investigation Team were able to identify the suspects and, with additional information developed with investigators from the SFPD Homicide Detail, it was discovered they were also the suspects in the Ed French murder.
On Aug. 3, 2017 Fantasy Decuir, 20, of San Francisco was charged with robbery and conspiracy. Lamonte Mims, 19, of Patterson, was charged with robbery, conspiracy, being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm, carrying a concealed weapon in a vehicle, and committing an offense while out on bail or while released on his own recognizance from a prior offense. After the video of the crime surfaced, Decuir was charged with homicide, robbery, and use of a firearm in commission of a crime. Mims was booked for homicide, robbery, being a principal of a crime, and using a firearm in the commission of a felony.
Suspect released days before murder ‘by mistake’
Court records reveal that Mims was arrested while sitting in a vehicle in San Francisco’s Bayview District around 2:30 a.m. on July 4, 2017, for possessing a 9 mm Ruger and a .38 special handgun. On July 7, 2017he was formally charged, and on July 11, 2017 — just five days before the murder of Ed French — he appeared in a San Francisco courtroom before Judge Sharon Reardon, where the controversial Pretrial Diversion Project Public Safety Assessment Tool (PSA) gave Mims a faulty risk score that understated the danger he posed to the public. The system, created by the foundation of billionaire and former Enron energy trader John Arnold to calculate whether a suspect is a flight risk or likely to return to court, was given to San Francisco for free, but with conditions that prohibit the disclosure of “any information about the use of the Tool, including any information about the development, operation and presentation of the Tool.”
Mims was already on felony probation after an arrest in November 2016 for breaking into cars at Twin Peaks. He did three months in jail and was given a stay-away order for the popular tourist destination. But he also did jail time in San Mateo, and because dozens of other counties using the “free” tool don’t have the ability to talk to each other, it wasn’t figured into the PSA score.
“The judge actually said, ‘Yes, he is dangerous. He was in a car in San Francisco, where he doesn’t live, at 2 in the morning with guns,’” said Higginbotham, who had known Ed French for three decades and was his partner for more than 10 years. Even though Judge Reardon wasn’t bound by the PSA score, she released Mims with “assertive case management,” a pretrial program that requires check-ins.
“He violated two probations. He was a convicted felon, and he had a gun charge just five days before Ed’s murder,” Higginbotham said. “Something like 58 counties using this system weren’t sharing information. I talked to [then-District Attorney] George Gascón about it, and he said he was ‘working on that’ but he never got back to me.”
While Gascón said he didn’t agree with the release of Mims, his office also didn’t argue for or against it. Gascón did make it clear to French’s family that the murder was a special circumstances case — homicide committed during a robbery — which carries a sentence of life in prison without parole. Bail was set at $5 million each for Decuir and Mims.
Five years later, the suspects remained behind bars, but the case still hadn’t moved forward. “We’ve been to something like 49 arraignments,” Higginbotham said at the time. “They keep firing their attorneys and it keeps dragging on — it’s like they’re the king and queen and we are all just pawns,” Lorrie French added. “Both had lengthy rap sheets even as teens; a mistake was made with the algorithm, but the judge obviously didn’t even look at the file to see Mims had done jail time before. Even in the second robbery after Ed’s murder, Mims said he held the gun because ‘he didn’t want Fantasy to kill someone else,’ but he was assaulting Ed when Fantasy shot him and kicked him while he was dying.”
Conflict of Kate: Bill could have set accused murderer free
In 2018, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 1437 into California law, narrowing the felony murder rule to those who “commit murder, intend it, or act with reckless indifference to human life.” Under the old rule, people could be charged with murder for a death that occurred during commission of a felony in which they participated, even if they didn’t kill anyone or know that someone had been killed.
“Most people have no idea that you could be charged with murder and convicted with murder without having committed murder or even being present when the murder occurred,” Senator Nancy Skinner, who introduced the legislation, said at the time. The author of the bill was Kate Chatfield, then the policy director of Restore Justice, an organization that, according to its website, “develops policy solutions that will roll back the ‘tough on crime’ policies of the past.” Chatfield is a longtime friend of Boudin’s, working as his senior director of legislation and policy before being elevated to chief of staff.
“District attorneys can no longer threaten everyone with a first-degree life sentence in the same way,” Chatfield said of SB 1437 when it was enacted. And, the law applies retroactively, meaning people can petition to have a murder conviction vacated. Chatfield estimated that approximately 800 people could be resentenced under her new legislation — and Mims believed he should be one of them. The attorney representing Mims, Paul Demeester, has appeared before two judges asking that the murder charge be thrown out under SB 1437. Both requests were denied. “You say you weren’t an active participant,” one of the judges said. “I watched the video three times, and you kicked the man while he was dying.” Even Judge Brendan Conroy, who actively worked on resentencing felony murder cases with Boudin’s office, said Mims was equally culpable.
Boudin asked for meeting to discuss possible plea deals
When Boudin took office in 2020, Lorrie asked if he would be stepping in and changing the charges on her brother’s accused killers. “He said ‘no — it was a murder,’” Lorrie said. “But now he’s stepping in.” Lorrie later discovered that Boudin met with the defense attorneys representing Mims and Decuir regarding possible plea deals for the pair. Demeester believed Mims should not be charged with murder under SB 1437, and Decuir’s attorney, Mark Iverson (who did “intensive discovery” on his client and her family) wanted to lessen her culpability because, according to his reconnaissance, she suffered from sickle cell anemia. Both suspects were young, with Mims just 19 at the time, and Boudin had long made it clear that he didn’t believe young people should go to jail.
Lorrie soon received word from the district attorney’s office that Boudin wanted to meet with her on Feb. 24, 2020 to “go over the requests” of the defense attorneys. In a stunning conflict of interest, SB 1437 author and current Boudin Chief of Staff Kate Chatfield would also be present at the meeting. That’s when she reached out to the press, but only had two takers for the story — me and the San Francisco Experience podcast. I interviewed Lorrie for my Substack newsletter, Gotham by the Bay, as well as the Marina Times, and she also appeared on a hard-hitting segment of the San Francisco Experience. The coverage led Boudin to cancel the Feb. 24, 2020 meeting.
Asked about Boudin’s preference for “restorative justice” over incarceration, Lorrie said, “Restorative justice? If they can restore my brother, that would be justice. Restore what? Restore them back to the streets to do this to others? I am not the victim who will get up and say, ‘I forgive you.’ There is no forgiveness in my heart. We have fought five years for justice. We are not going away until we have justice for Ed.”
Enter a new district Attorney Brooke Jenkins
After Boudin was recalled, new District Attorney Brooke Jenkins took the case to trial. On May 22, 2023, Mims was convicted of second-degree robbery in relation to French, but the jury couldn’t reach a verdict for Decuir on the same charge, with a vote of 10–2. Despite overwhelming evidence, including viewing the killing on videotape, the jury hung on the murder charges, voting 10–2 in favor of convicting Mims and Decuir of murdering Ed French — however, a unanimous verdict is required for a murder conviction.
Jenkins refused to give up, refiling the case. After a second trial in September 2024, Mims and Decuir were convicted, and on Dec. 6, 2024 Judge Alexandra Gordon sentenced both to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Assistant District Attorneys Heather Trevisan (who has been the point of contact for Lorrie and Higginbotham from the start) and Aaron Laycook once again prosecuted the case. “After seven long years we have a conviction and now a just sentence,” Trevisan stated. “Although nothing will truly heal the anguish caused by this callous senseless murder, we are relieved that Ms. Decuir and Mr. Mims will not be able to hurt anyone else in our community ever again.”
Meanwhile, Decuir’s attorney, Iverson, continued to blame “the extreme pain” she experienced from sickle-cell disease, calling the sentence “inhumane and unjust” in a statement to the Bay Area Reporter. “She has no prior criminal record, and she experienced extreme and unaddressed childhood trauma. Science has demonstrated that youthful offenders like Ms. Decuir have a heightened capacity for change and rehabilitation. The stark racial disparities in how life imprisonment without parole has been administered in California, generally, and in San Francisco, specifically, illustrates the profound institutional racism underlying this punishment. This legacy of racism compounds the cruelty … where Ms. Decuir will never have a meaningful opportunity to appear before a parole board.”
Lorrie saw it another way. “We’ve been fighting seven years and finally justice, it should never take this long,” she told ABC 7 reporter J.R. Stone. “It’s on film, there was no question that they murdered him. For it to take seven years of my life and all his friends’ and families’ lives to finally get justice … something is very wrong with the system.”