San Francisco’s 2024 election was a head-scratcher. Two incumbent Superior Court judges, Michael Begert and Patrick Thompson, glided to reelection despite Stop Crime Court Watch marking them with failing grades on curbing recidivism. In a 2023 citywide survey, two-thirds of San Francisco residents said public safety was worse, and three-quarters point fingers at judges for spiking crime rates. So why did San Francisco voters reward judges tagged as soft on crime? We surveyed registered San Francisco voters in March 2025 to unpack this paradox.
Judicial transparency: A cry in the dark
Our survey chart shows voters are fed up. A whopping 90 percent (Top 3 Box) demand more sunlight on judges who keep releasing repeat offenders back onto San Francisco’s streets. Over two-thirds (69 percent) are adamant — strongly agreeing or agreeing — they want the lowdown on judges whose rulings fuel recidivism among serial crooks.
Exhibit A: Judge Sylvia Husing has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons. District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has repeatedly called out judges like Husing for letting fentanyl dealers walk free while awaiting trial. Take Francis Rivas-Garay, a repeat offender charged with peddling fentanyl. Judge Husing cut him loose, only for him to deal again with 53.7 grams of fentanyl — enough to wipe out 26,850 adults. Voters are clear: 91 percent (Top 3 Box) insist fentanyl dealers should be locked up pretrial, with 70 percent firmly backing Jenkins’ tougher stance. Nearly nine in 10 say judges who keep handing serial felons lenient sentences, against the district attorney’s advice, should be booted.
But here’s the kicker: Judge Husing isn’t elected. She’s a visiting judge from San Bernardino, unaccountable to San Francisco voters. Why does San Francisco, with 58 judges and a paltry 39 percent case clearance rate (compared to Alameda’s 96 percent), need outsiders? The math does not add up. San Francisco courts limp along with seven bench trials per judge annually, while Alameda clocks 342. Yet, visiting judges like Husing and Tsenin, who sparked outrage with a probation ruling in Anh Peng Taylor’s stabbing case, keep getting tapped. Chief judges must justify heavy caseloads to obtain visiting judges, but these numbers reveal inefficiency, not overload.
Low-info voters, high-stakes ballots
Why are San Francisco voters reelecting judges who seem to scoff at public safety? In the chart below, our March 2025 survey reveals that local television news reaches only one-third of voters. And among these television reporters, only ABC7 with criminal investigator Dan Noyes, regularly covers judicial sentencing.
Our survey also paints a picture of “low-information” voters, who lean on mental shortcuts instead of dissecting judicial track records. Party affiliation, media endorsements, or even a candidate’s name or gender often sway ballots more than hard data on rulings. Chatting with an Uber driver who is a lifelong San Franciscan, I asked who he backed for mayor and why. His answer? “Lurie, ’cause he attended Town like me.” Others confessed to picking candidates with Chinese-sounding names, tied to ancestral roots — a tactic so potent that progressives lobbied the California Department of Elections to curb character-based names on ballots, hampering non-Chinese candidates’ ability to craft appealing aliases. Also, many media outlets tend to obsess over arrests but skimp on sentencing details, especially regarding judges, because the information is difficult to procure.
Take the November 2021 Union Square smash-and-grab: Over 50 shoplifters, some swinging golf clubs, ransacked over 10 retailers, including Louis Vuitton, Bloomingdale’s, Walgreens, and a cannabis dispensary, making off with $1 million in goods. Shelves were left bare, with stores in shambles. Yet, only about 10 faced charges, including Tomiko Miller, whose getaway car held a firearm. Released pretrial, Miller kept breaking into cars and even ditched his ankle monitor. His defense team deftly worked California’s custody credit system: 1.2 years in pretrial detention netted Miller 2.4 years of sentencing credits. Judge Linda Colfax, given full reign via an “open plea,” accepted the district attorney’s push for a five-year sentence on paper, but in reality, she suspended it and handed Miller probation instead. Just as the court transcript states below, essentially, Miller served zero post-conviction jail time and was released shortly thereafter.
Our search uncovered no local television news reporting on Tomiko Miller’s sentencing in 2023. The few local news sources that did, failed to mention that the five-year sentence of Tomiko Miller was suspended by Judge Colfax entirely. Thus, readers were not only underinformed, but misinformed.
Was this a deliberate sleight-of-hand by the courts? Frank Noto of Stop Crime Action seems to think so:
The San Francisco Superior Court is notoriously opaque, and it often seems like they will do everything possible to keep the facts quiet …. The Union Square attack certainly had major consequences for San Francisco’s economy, not to mention the loss of millions in lost tax revenue. And then of course city taxpayers spent an additional $2 million in police patrols after the looting, trying to protect local residents’ jobs in retail and the tourism industry.
Others might point out that the San Francisco Chronicle, which endorsed Judges Begert and Thompson in 2024, rarely spotlights soft-on-crime rulings, while downplaying crime overall.
What about the other Union Square felons? Hatun Noguera of Stop Crime Court Watch has been tracking the judicial rulings. He revealed that most of the others received little or no detention time pretrial, while their public defenders use similar strategies to pitch for lighter, probationary sentences post-conviction. This strategy proved effective under Judge Linda Colfax and Judge Christine Van Aken, as not a single Union Square felon received any jail-time post-conviction in 2023, as shown in the chart below.
Francill White and Kimberly Cherry, caught with $28,000 in stolen loot, snagged primary caregiver diversion — a program expanded under former District Attorney Chesa Boudin to keep parents with misdemeanors out of jail. Maljane Williams and Jamisi Calloway, despite firearms and outstanding warrants, also got diversion. Daron Wilson, Edward James Jr., and Michael Ray, who resisted arrest after making away with tens of thousands in merchandise, walked with probation. Judges Colfax and Van Aken ensured not a single Union Square felon saw post-conviction jail time in 2023. But voters will get their chance to weigh in on the matter in 2026, when Judge Van Aken is up for reelection, and in 2028 for Colfax.
Then there’s Aziza Graves, convicted on 53 counts of pilfering $60,000 from Safeway, Target, and Abercrombie & Fitch. Graves served only 231 days in pretrial detention and zero days in jail post-conviction. Against the prosecutor’s request, Judge Brendan Conroy offered Graves a plea deal, reducing 138 counts down to single grand theft felony. Judge Conroy is up for reelection in 2026. Judge Jeffrey Ross, who was also on the case, agreed to the prosecutor’s 2.5yrs plea deal, but gave Graves no post-conviction jail time. Judge Jeffrey Ross, unchallenged, waltzed into another six-year term in 2024, thanks to the incumbent advantage. He won’t be up for reelection until 2030.
A city under siege, a system in shadows
Retail theft is choking San Francisco. American Eagle reported over 100 “significant” thefts and assaults at Westfield Mall between 2022 and 2023, prompting a lawsuit against mall management. The final nail in the coffin came when retail anchors, Nordstrom and Macy’s Union Square flagship store, announced their closures — with Macy’s employees citing daily thefts by multiple perpetrators. Car-ramming heists have hit Dior (October 2023), CVS (December 2023), Louis Vuitton (October 2024), and Chanel (March 2025), with no public word on arrests or charges. “Retail theft continues to have a major impact on San Francisco businesses from the small mom-and-pop corner store to the large retail stores,” said District Attorney Brooke Jenkins.
Voters tried to fight back, passing California Proposition 36 to crack down on serial theft and fentanyl dealing. But San Francisco’s courts, operating in a fog of obscurity, keep funneling felonies into probation. And if $1 million retail heists and felonies get only probation, where does that leave misdemeanor thefts and related assaults? Retail pharmacies now barricade everything from toothpaste to aspirin behind endless locked plastic casings to thwart rampant shoplifting, similar to this CVS on Clement Street.
A CVS employee confided that even with security, shoplifters strike daily, slipping in before or after guard shifts. Earlier this year, Walgreens announced 12 store closures across the city. The impact on residents, the community, and tourism continues to be devastating. Unlike federal courts, where records are accessible via the fee-based Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) portal, San Francisco offers no equivalent. California law governs court record access. Voters must rely on investigative journalism on judicial rulings, in which only one-third say they tap regularly.
Clearing the fog
San Francisco’s courts are a black box, doling out probation to felons while voters scream for accountability. New retailers may brave downtown, but they’ll face the same crime-courts carousel. If San Francisco wants safer, bustling streets, it needs more than Proposition 36 or fresh storefronts. It needs a blazing spotlight on judicial rulings, accessible timely court data, and voters armed with facts, not guesswork. Independent digital outlets like the Voice of San Francisco and San Francisco Public Safety News are stepping up, shining light where some legacy media have treaded too lightly. But voters must do their part — support these sources, dig into their reports, and demand a justice system that answers to the city it serves.
This article has been updated to include further information on the Aziza Graves trial.