The California State Bar is responding to a series of ethics complaints against SF DA Brooke Jenkins by sending her into a diversion program for low-level offender attorneys, the exact type of program she campaigned against Chesa Boudin for using.
There has been no shortage of ethics scandals in DA Brooke Jenkins’s office in her now nearly three years since being appointed. She was in office barely a month when we learned she was being paid about $153,000 by backers of the Recall Chesa Boudin campaign, despite climbing to be a “volunteer spokesperson.” And we are learning today about allegations she’d allegedly coached a witness in a child molestation case, though whatever that story is, details have not yet bubbled up in the press.
There were apparently eight total ethics violations complaints filed against Jenkins with the California State Bar, admittedly, all of them from Boudin allies and supporters. But the State Bar has found evidence of wrongdoing in only one of these, that Jenkins had illegally shared the rap sheet of a suspect with someone not authorized to see it, in the case of New Year’s Eve 2020 hit-and-run suspect Troy McAlister. But the State Bar has also decided they would have trouble proving that Jenkins committed this misconduct intentionally.
And so, as the Chronicle reports, the bar organization is requiring Jenkins to participate in a diversion program to clear the charges of that case. It’s basically a slap on the wrist wherein she would likely take some ethics classes or courses, and does not have to admit to wrongdoing.
“We have decided that your complaint is best resolved by requiring the attorney to participate in (the Office of Chief Trial Counsel’s) diversion program,” the state bar wrote in a March memo to one of the complainants obtained by the Chronicle. “We believe that the attorney’s participation in the diversion program, if successful, will adequately address the conduct that you brought to our attention.”
These diversion programs are used for what are described as “relatively minor” offenses, and avoids a full investigation into the matter. It generally involves the subject of the complaint having to attend “a general instructional course on attorney ethical obligations to clients and courts.”
Yes, this is exactly the kind of program that Jenkins excoriated Chesa Boudin for using on suspects under his watch. And the Chronicle reported last month that Jenkins has been slashing the number of suspects diverted into such programs compared to her predecessor Boudin.
And now, she has been ordered into one.
“It’s ironic that District Attorney Jenkins, who often opposes diversion in court—and thereby closes off an avenue for our clients to better their lives — has now been ordered to complete professional diversion,” SF Public Defender Mano Raju said in his own statement to the Chronicle.
Jenkins, of course, sees it otherwise.
“Political opponents, who were ardent supporters of Chesa, attempted to weaponize the state bar’s complaint process,” Jenkins said response to the Chron’s report. “The state bar conducted a fair, thorough and comprehensive investigation.”
The one issue the state bar did nail her on was the sharing the rap sheet of of hit-and-run suspect Troy McAlister with her fellow disgruntled Boudin employee Don du Bain, and sending confidential city records to du Bain’s personal email account. The Chronicle obtained Jenkins’s excuse for this as submitted to the state bar, and it is not unlike the Trump administration's accidentally sharing classified information on a military attack with a journalist. Jenkins said she is “surmising that the (email) system must have auto-filled his personal email address when she started typing D-O-N and she didn’t realize it.”
And as such, the state bar says it would be difficult to prove intent.
“While there are significant evidentiary issues with establishing the complaint allegations by clear and convincing evidence (our burden at any disciplinary hearing),” the bar wrote in their ruling. “There is evidence that Jenkins should not have accessed or handled McAlister’s rap sheet in the way she did given the statutory limits on access and use of criminal history information.”
We may never know whether Jenkins agrees to the diversion program, or what the remediation course would be, because the program is confidential. Though if she doesn’t complete the program, the now-suspended case against her would be reopened and investigated, and she could be disciplined.
Image: @BrookeJenkinsSF via Twitter
