Ocean Beach isn’t the only place in San Francisco that is shrouded in fog year round. Step into the halls of San Francisco Superior Court and you’ll wade through bureaucratic layers of procedural inefficiencies that will make your head spin faster than a botched exorcism. As a court watch volunteer for Stop Crime Action, it’s very difficult to find any information about court hearings, either in-person or online.
Take Marcos Smith-Pequeno, accused of pilfering over $16,000 in Walgreens loot. A judge cut him loose pretrial, defying District Attorney Brooke Jenkins’s plea to hold him. Public backlash on X erupted, irked that the San Francisco Standard’s first report omitted the judge’s name. After much public clamor, Judge Gerardo Sandoval emerged as the presiding judge in a corrected piece.
Want to know what judge presided over a hearing? Good luck — requests can languish for weeks, demanding a litany of details aimed at the right court recorder. Transcripts come with a fee which only that recorder can materialize, unless you trek in-person, DMV-style, to eyeball transcripts under a court employee’s watchful gaze. If this labyrinth is meant to deter, it’s a masterclass in obstruction.
Structural inefficiencies and legal chess moves choke San Francisco’s court calendar. While Covid prompted savvier counties to pivot to remote hearings, reducing case backlogs, San Francisco floundered — its digital backbone too rigid to flex. In 2024, over 70 misdemeanor cases — think domestic violence, hate crimes, DUIs with injuries, were dismissed after delays stretched past a year. A state appellate court slapped down San Francisco Superior Court’s Covid-delay excuse, ruling it unlawful after pandemic grace periods had faded. Judge Anne-Christine Massullo shrugged, “our courts were bound by the decision of three judges … there was no discretion.” Yet reality bears a bleaker truth.
A tale of two counties
San Francisco judges and courts wield a large amount of discretion and power over every functioning aspect of criminal justice, from scheduling pretrial hearings after an arrest to setting bail maximums and posttrial sentencing. According to the California Judicial Council’s 2024 Court Statistics Report, San Francisco Superior Court had a case clearance rate of 38.5 percent with 56 judges (57,653 filings, 22,207 resolved), compared to Alameda County’s clearance rate of 95.7 percent with 83 judges (187,091 filings, 178,968 resolved). Alameda has twice the estimated population of San Francisco, and reported 3.2 times more caseload (criminal and misdemeanors combined), yet resolved more cases with less judicial muscle per capita and filings, than San Francisco by far.
San Francisco held only 400 judge-only “court trials,” about seven per judge, while Alameda conducted 28,419, or 342 per judge. A “court trial” occurs when a judge alone hears a case and decides the outcome, no jury is involved, and it covers offenses from shoplifting to assaults and fentanyl dealing. The self-reported court data implies San Francisco courts suffer from procedural inefficiencies, exacerbated by judges that refuse to hold perpetrators in jail while awaiting trial.
Court data hints at San Francisco judges’ reluctance to jail suspects pretrial. District Attorney Jenkins’s 2023 One-Year Impact Report flags 517 drug offenders who were released but then skipped court. Their arrest warrants are overdue by 30 months. Of these, almost 30 percent had multiple offenses, a recidivism red flag fueled by premature freedom. In a 2023 interview, Jenkins filed 100 motions to detain, but fewer than 20 were granted. This forced the district attorney to shift to the Federal Fast-Track Courts where fentanyl dealers face judges and deportation in federal courts. This allows San Francisco prosecutors to bypass many “soft-on-crime” judges that have six-year terms with no term limits.
Once judges are in office, they have incumbent advantage, which means they are automatically reelected if no official challenger runs against them.
Unfortunately, knowing exactly who those “soft-on-crime” judges are can be daunting, thus the Stop Crime Court Watch program sends volunteers to take detailed notes on the conduct of judges and puts together a Judges Report Card. There’s even less transparency on how these judges are nominated for appointments by the governor, which begs the question as to whether public safety on our streets should have more weight than a handful of influencers that have the governor’s ear. Once judges are in office, they have incumbent advantage, which means they are automatically reelected if no official challenger runs against them.
Justice delayed is justice denied
Delaying hearings and court trials can also be legal strategies leveraged by public defenders to exhaust victims into abandoning justice, as in the 2020 New Year Eve hit-and-run that killed Hanako Abe and Elizabeth Platt. The Voice of San Franciso reported that Troy McAlister had 73 felonies and 34 misdemeanors, but waived his right to a speedy trial, which allowed public defenders to continually induce postponements. This allowed the case to languish for half a decade.
Every poignant anniversary of Hanako’s life and death is marked by her mother on X, wondering if justice will prevail in San Francisco. Recently, District Attorney Jenkins announced an eight-count indictment of McAllister, which includes gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and firearm possession with a prior conviction. This means, after five years of delay, Hanako’s case was finally heard by a grand jury and sufficient evidence was presented by prosecutors that led to eight indictments for a pending trial. When that trial will take place could take years.
Loopholes in our laws
Many laws throw curveballs into this judicial fog. For a decade, California Proposition 47 dampened felony charges for sophisticated serial theft and fentanyl dealing. California Penal Code §236.23 lets dealers claim “human trafficking victim,” to dodge hard jail time, while San Francisco’s 1989 sanctuary status blocks federal collaboration in deportations amid skyrocketing overdose deaths.
Judges also greenlight public defenders for undocumented dealers like Ever Noel Calix, who was nabbed with enough fentanyl to kill 2,200 people. Current law says only the truly broke should snag a taxpayer-funded attorney, but in an 18-month investigation some dealers made upward of $350,000 per year, which led Supervisor Matt Dorsey to quip on X, whether $350,000-a-year drug lords deserve taxpayer lawyers. Calix’s taxpayer defense grilled the arresting officer with, “Did you ask if he’s a victim of human trafficking?” and “Did you explain what human trafficking is?” — then pushed to suppress drug evidence by citing “racial justice violations” for an arrest and search in the Tenderloin based on loitering and the exchange of “small objects.”
Judges have the final say on such calls, and with some 24 judges up for reelection in 2026, we aim to spotlight rulings that have the most impact on public safety. San Francisco deserves a justice system that cuts through the obscurity for its everyday residents.
Liz Le is an entrepreneur, research strategist, 20-year San Francisco resident, poli-sci/econ maverick, and parent of two teens.