San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins speaks to the audience after she was sworn in during a ceremony at Herbst Pavilion by U. S. Senator Alex Padilla in San Francisco, Calif., on Wednesday, January 11, 2023. A public defender representing Troy McAlister filed a motion Tuesday to recuse her from the high-profile case.
Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The ChronicleA San Francisco public defender is pressing to remove District Attorney Brooke Jenkins from the prosecution of Troy McAlister , the man accused of killing two women after speeding through a red light in a stolen car on New Year’s Eve 2020 — an incident that helped galvanize the recall of Jenkins’ predecessor, Chesa Boudin.
In a motion filed Tuesday in San Francisco Superior Court, Deputy Public Defender Scott Grant, who represents McAlister, sought to disqualify Jenkins from the case following reports that, in 2021, she sent sensitive files — including McAlister’s rap sheet — to the personal email of prosecutor Donald Du Bain, before the two of them left the District Attorney’s Office to join the recall campaign.
The two former assistant district attorneys then used McAlister’s case documents as grist for political messaging, the motion said, frequently invoking the defendant’s criminal history and Boudin’s handling of his case in their push to oust the former district attorney . McAlister has pleaded not guilty to gross vehicular manslaughter and other charges.
If the judge grants the motion and Jenkins’ office is recused, state Attorney General Rob Bonta would likely take over the case, Grant said in an interview Thursday.
“That’s what we are asking for in the motion, essentially,” he said.
By using McAlister for personal and political gain, Jenkins created a conflict of interest that impedes her office from prosecuting the case impartially, and jeopardizes the defendant’s right to a fair trial, Grant argued in the motion.
A spokesperson for Jenkins’ office acknowledged Thursday that the state attorney general had been served with the defense’s motion to recuse.
“We anticipate they will respond, as they do in all other recusal motions,” the spokesperson, Randy Quezada, said in a statement. “The San Francisco District Attorney’s Office is able to prosecute this case fairly and impartially,” he added.
State laws permit the sharing of rap sheets only for legitimate legal reasons. Such guardrails aim to protect the privacy of the accused, and to prevent members of law enforcement from turning criminal records into political fodder. Gratuitous publishing of criminal records could be harmful to an individual, Grant said, because in these files, “raw arrests of someone who is completely innocent show up the same as convictions.”
Boudin, a progressive former public defender who pledged to reduce mass incarceration, declined to charge McAlister with new crimes when he was arrested several times in the months leading up to the fatal wreck. Additionally, his office dismissed McAlister’s prior “strikes” in a robbery case in 2020, which could have subjected the defendant to a life sentence under California’s “three strikes” law for repeat offenders.
“The McAlister case was a talking point used by aligned political groups in their campaigns to recall Boudin,” Grant wrote in the motion, noting that Jenkins kept deploying McAlister’s name and case after Mayor London Breed appointed her last July to fill her old boss’ job, using the incident to fuel her election campaign in November.
Jenkins admitted to sending McAlister’s confidential information to DuBain’s personal email, the filing said, though she said she intended to send it to his government email address.
“To date, Jenkins has not provided any reason for accessing or sharing any files, police reports, or the rap sheet of Troy McAlister given that at the time she was not professionally involved in the McAlister case,” Grant wrote in the motion. He noted, further, that Jenkins is facing a State Bar complaint for misconduct, stemming, at least in part, from her decision to disseminate confidential information for a case to which she had not been assigned.
“Our system relies heavily on integrity of prosecutors to disclose information to the defense,” Grant said. “The fact that this was done secretly, and not revealed until after she was appointed as the D.A. — (a role where) she had ultimate power over Mr. McAlister — deeply concerns me.”
Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan
