The decision to charge Samayoa was historic. At the time, no San Francisco police officer had ever faced criminal charges for killing someone while on duty. During his time as district attorney, Boudin went on to file homicide charges against several other officers.
But after he was removed from office last year in a deeply contentious recall election, the case against Samayoa languished. Jenkins, who was ultimately elected to serve out Boudin’s term in November, reassigned the prosecutor who had been handling the Samayoa case for two years and postponed the next hearing to December. Jenkins said her administration needed to reevaluate the case, but the extended delay made O’Neil’s aunt April Green and others fearful that Jenkins would drop the charges after the election as payback to the San Francisco Police Officers Association — one of Boudin’s biggest detractors.
“This confirms every suspicion that Ms. Green had,” Brian Ford, an attorney for Green, told BuzzFeed News Thursday. “It’s everything that we believed becoming very real. … Brooke Jenkins is more interested in protecting police and dirtying up and attacking Boudin than she is in seeking justice for the citizens of San Francisco.”
The decision to dismiss the charges comes after Samayoa’s attorneys filed a motion last month seeking an order for pretrial discovery after the district attorney’s office provided them with recent interviews it conducted with investigators who previously worked on the case.
According to the filing, an investigator for the DA’s office determined in 2018 that the case against Samayoa “was not prosecutable,” and his conclusion was backed up by others in the office at the time. Samayoa’s attorneys accused Boudin of “egregious prosecutorial misconduct” for withholding this information, arguing that the former district attorney did so “to promote his political platform to punish peace officers.”
During a Jan. 27 hearing, assistant district attorney Darby Williams did not object to the motion or the defense’s request to again delay Samayoa’s preliminary hearing, the legal proceeding where a judge determines whether there is sufficient evidence for the case to go to trial. As a result, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Loretta M. Giorgi ultimately decided to continue the hearing to March 1.
In a statement to BuzzFeed News, Boudin called Jenkins’ dismissal of the case “offensive” and “dishonest,” as he accused her of coordinating with Samayoa’s defense team.
“She is scapegoating me to try to divert attention from what this decision ultimately reveals about her: Jenkins will not hold everyone equally accountable under the law, she is deeply politically motivated, and she does not care about victims of police violence,” Boudin said.
