The Innocence Commission, a five-member team of volunteer experts, is supposed to work with the office of San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins to review potential wrongful convictions.
The commission formed in 2020, as a priority of then-District Attorney Chesa Boudin. It secured a major win with the 2022 exoneration of Joaquin Ciria, who had spent 32 years in prison for a shooting homicide.
But more than two years later, the commission appears to have frozen to a halt. What were nearly monthly meetings trickled to a complete stop in April 2024. None of the commission’s members responded to repeated requests from Gazetteer SF about what the group is working on, if anything.
A Gazetteer review of the commission’s emailed agendas and meeting reminders between September 2022 and December 2024 shows it held near-monthly meetings from September through July 2023 — and then no sessions until February 2024. It scheduled meetings for March and April, but the records stop there.
According to the District Attorney’s office, the Innocence Commission must include an academic, a medical expert, a retired judge, and representatives from the Public Defender’s Office and District Attorney’s office. All members are appointed by the D.A., and they are empowered to investigate wrongful conviction claims and make recommendations to the D.A.’s Post-Conviction Review Unit, which has the final authority to take up a case and prepare court proceedings.
Boudin was recalled in a contentious 2022 vote, and then-Mayor London Breed appointed Jenkins to the D.A. role. While Jenkins went on a firing spree with Boudin’s staff, she kept the Innocence Commission as part of her office. As part of reforms to the commission, Jenkins fired Assistant District Attorney and commission liaison Arcelia Hurtado, then appointed Julia Cervantes, new lead attorney for the DA’s Post-Conviction Review office, in her place.
“Unfortunately, there are far too many cases of innocent people being behind bars when they shouldn’t be,” Jenkins stated in an announcement of the change. “My office is committed to ensuring the integrity and longevity of the Commission for years to come.”
Hurtado told the Bay Area Reporter in 2022 that she was fired without cause. She declined a request from Gazetteer to discuss her work, instead directing questions to Innocence Commission Chair Lara Bazelon, a professor and director of the Criminal Juvenile Justice and Racial Justice clinical programs at the University of San Francisco. Bazelon did not respond to multiple emails and phone calls.
Another member of the commission, retired Judge LaDoris Cordell, initially offered to speak to Gazetteer on the record, but stopped replying on Dec. 2.
Commission member Jacque Wilson, who is deputy public defender at the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, also did not provide comment. In an email, his office wrote that “he doesn’t have any updates to share.” Attempts to contact Dr. Michael Meade, the commission’s medical expert, went unanswered.
Records of the commission’s past agendas, which were reviewed by Gazetteer, show the group was in the middle of discussing a criminal case when the meetings stopped, including mentions of DNA testing results and a collaboration with Santa Clara County’s Crime Laboratory.
The most recent email, regarding an April meeting of the commission, also notes there was an “initial draft of the Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law Memorandum” about the case, the details of which were censored. According to the main website for the Innocence Commission, that document is the last step before the D.A.’s office decides whether to take up a case.
The District Attorney’s office did not respond to repeated questions about whether the commission is still active, or has adjudicated any cases since the 2022 exoneration of Ciria. It is unclear whether the findings mentioned in the final emailed agenda in April 2024 were ever given to Jenkins’ office for review.
