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Progressive firefighter Jeff Adachi, who was elected public defender in San Francisco for 17 years, died suddenly of an apparent heart attack Friday night. He was 59 years old.
Adachi, a Japanese American, was the son of a Sacramento auto mechanic and a lab assistant. As he told KQED in the 2002 documentary Presumed guilty, centered on the San Francisco Public Defender's office, his parents and grandparents were sent to an internment camp for Americans of Japanese descent during the Second World War. Adachi was born in 1959, graduated from UC Berkeley in 1981, and from Hastings University Law School in 1985.
With a dragon tattoo on his arm and posters of Malcolm X and Rage Against the Machine in his office, Adachi was an iconoclast made in a San Francisco mold.
After serving as deputy public defender, Adachi was elected head of the public defender's office in 2002. He ran against Kimiko Burton-Cruz, daughter of the famous Senator John Burton, appointed by the mayor of the city. time, Willie Brown, and as KQED recalls, he won the race as an anti-establishment candidate. He has since been re-elected four times, including the last in 2018. (San Francisco, in fact, is the only California county to elect its public defender).
Adachi submitted to "20 Questions" interviews with SFist not once but twice, the first time that he was running for mayor in 2011 against Ed Lee.
As the Chronicle writes, Adachi is remembered as "an intense and tenacious man who deepened his reflections on the subjects that interested him, regardless of what others thought".
Mayor London Breed, in a declaration, said that "Adachi" always defended those who had no voice, who had been ignored and neglected and who needed a true champion ".
In one tweet On Friday night, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón said, "Jeff was a passionate advocate who always fought for what he believed in.. He represented the underserved and gave his career to the public service. "
Senator Kamala Harris, who was previously DA of the city, said in a statement: "Jeff was a strong advocate for justice and police accountability, and a passionate and talented advocate for his clients. has never stopped working for a dignified justice system and has never stopped believing in our power to improve it, it's now up to us to continue this work. "
Not only did Adachi oversee a staff of more than 100 lawyers, who each year defend more than 25,000 indigent defendants, but he also often appeared in court. Along with the chief advocate of the public defender's office, Matt Gonzalez, Adachi defended Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, the undocumented and homeless immigrant charged with the murder committed during Kate's gun death Steinle in 2015. The case has drawn national attention to the debate on immigration and then the sensational rhetoric of candidate Donald Trump on undocumented immigrant criminals. Garcia Zarate was acquitted in November 2017 after Adachi and Gonzalez claimed that the shooting was accidental.
Most recently, he was acquitted of Carlos Argueta, the local tenant rights lawyer, charged with second degree murder for stabbing a man on Sixth Street in 2015. Adachi notably pleaded himself the case and called his client at the helm. by submitting it to cross-examination.
The best example of Adachi's willingness to attack unpopular causes was his defense of Proposition B in 2010. This failed measure was aimed at reducing the budget and future commitments of the city by forcing its employees to contribute more to their health and retirement benefits. At the time, Adachi told the Chronicle: "If you're talking about the only problem that threatens essential government services and the quality of life in San Francisco, that's fine. public, we often have to take unpopular positions.We represent unpopular customers themselves.From definition, our role is to challenge the system. "
Bevan Dufty, a friend and colleague of Adachi for 20 years, said in a statement to the Chronicle, "[Adachi] really tried to see the chart in promoting services and approaches to reduce recidivism. I really felt that he had the vision to reduce the participation of the poor in the justice system. I did not always agree with him, but I always appreciated that he made this work much more ambitious than what the charter recommended. In addition, Dufty added, "He had a great sense of humor. "
Adachi is survived by his wife, Mutsuko Adachi, and a daughter, Lauren.
In his most recent interview with SFist, in 2014, Adachi told the story of his first trip to San Francisco, while he was a teenager, in Sacramento. "The first time I came here alone in high school, my cousin and I visited our class," he said. "Everyone ate at Castagnola but we did not have $ 20, so we bought French breads and cold cuts for a few dollars and we ate them in a grassy area near Fisherman's Wharf." Was the best sandwich I've ever eaten! "
Related: 20 questions with SFist: public defender SF, Jeff Adachi [SFist]
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