The San Francisco city controller will scrutinize a steep rise in criminal cases that has become so burdensome for the city’s court system over the past months that judges said this week they may release suspects who do not have access to lawyers.

The controller is taking a hard look at case loads in both the district attorney’s office and the public defender’s office. District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has prosecuted more misdemeanor cases in her three years in office, and the public defender’s office has been subsequently pushed to a “breaking point,” Public Defender Raju said.

Public defenders in May they began declaring themselves “unavailable” for new criminal cases one day a week. In a letter that month, Chief Attorney Matt Gonzalez with the public defender’s office wrote that the

See Full Page