San Francisco’s District Attorney is fighting a demand for Mayor Daniel Lurie to testify in person at the start of a criminal case against Tony Phillips, the man whom Lurie’s bodyguard confronted and tussled with in the Tenderloin on March 5.
Phillips has been charged with resisting and assaulting a police officer, both felonies, after the mayor and the bodyguard, Joel Aguayo, asked Phillips to move from Cedar Street, between Van Ness Avenue and Larkin Street. That encounter resulted in a physical altercation.
Ivan Rodriguez, a lawyer representing Phillips, has subpoenaed Lurie in an attempt to get the mayor’s live testimony for a June 2 preliminary hearing, which will determine if the DA has sufficient evidence to put Phillips on trial for the alleged crimes.
At a hearing Friday, a judge is expected to determine if Lurie must testify next week.
Lurie gave a recorded statement of what he saw on March 5 to a San Francisco Police Department sergeant. Erin Loback, an assistant district attorney, argues that for Phillips’ preliminary hearing, Lurie’s recorded testimony is good enough.
Compelling the mayor to testify is an “improper attempt to harass, embarrass, and burden an elected public official and perhaps cause a media spectacle in a case that has already attracted substantial attention,” Loback wrote in a court filing.
Loback added in the filing that by trying to call Lurie as a witness, Rodriguez is fishing for evidence to help his client’s case, and “hoping that Mayor Lurie will say something different” from what he said in the recording.
Rodriguez did not respond to a call and an email seeking comment.
Loback’s filings preview some of the DA’s arguments for the preliminary hearing. They include a description of how Aguayo, a police officer in Lurie’s security detail, confronted Phillips and pushed him to the ground. The two men then tussled, with Aguyo’s head hitting the street, according to the DA’s filing. The police officer suffered a concussion, and continued to experience symptoms from the injury for more than a month, according to the filing.
Earlier this month, Phillips won a release from jail on an earlier charge. His lawyer, Rodriguez, has argued that Phillips had no idea who Aguayo or Lurie were when they accosted him, and that the incident was entirely preventable if the mayor had stayed in his car.
