two prior convictions, they would go to the california supreme court for further review, and four justices on the california supreme court would need to approve the governor's action in that case. the california supreme court spends over 1/3 of their time working on death penalty cases, and they are under enormous pressure financially. the entire judicial system is. while we do not know what the supreme court would do, it would certainly be a huge relief to them to have these death penalty cases go away. after the death sentences had been converted to life without parole, it would be a question of reclassifying the inmates and moving them into other high- security prisons across california. then, the question of where they were in the appellate process would have to be addressed by the courts. in fact, both people -- most people on death row are still waiting for attorneys to be appointed, so in most cases, their appeals have not even begun. not most, 45%.

they do not have habeas counsel, and many do not even have their first appellate attorney. a lot of this cases would simply be treated as life without parole appeals. for the cases that are later in the states, courts would have to address whether the appeals continue or whether or not their sentence had been changed to life without parole simply resolve all the issues in their case and ended the appeals process. >> we've got less than five minutes, so i want to invite the panelists each to say something in closing. maybe you could each take a minute, whoever would like to go first. >> we can go this way, so i will start. it is a great pleasure to be here. it is a wonderful crowd today, and this is a wonderful panel to be here with. each of these individuals have enormous life experience that is so much more important than

anything i could say, and i have learned a lot being on this panel which east of them -- with each of them, and i appreciate them taking the time to share their views and being so honest and forthcoming. these are exactly the voices we need to end the death penalty in california and across the country, and i hope all of you will get involved and go to the website -- deathpenalty.org -- and you will find many ways to get involved. particularly right now, telling the governor to cut the death penalty, to convert all death sentences. if each of you were to go home and take that action, to send an e-mail message or hand write a letter to the governor, that would make a huge difference. together, we can end the death penalty in california. [applause] >> thank you for having me here today. i would like to close by saying i have had the opportunity to view this issue from every point

of view, having been the warden at san quentin state prison. i am absolutely impassioned about the fact that it is time to end the death penalty in this state. life without possibility of parole is the real sentence. hold people accountable and gives them the opportunity to change within the prison system, and they can give back by working within the prison system, giving restitution to family members and working on behalf of the state of california on a variety of projects that go on inside prisons. i also want to echo what the process said -- please join, please help -- i also want to echo what natasha said. talk to 10 of your friends, send e-mails, send letters. thank you. [applause] >> 1985, when i was sentenced to death for a crime i did not commit, i thought right away

that this would be rectified. i was convicted of two different crimes. it took 18 years. it took me seven execution dates. i watched 12 then be executed while i was there -- i watched 12 and then be executed while i was there. i'm not in a position to say whether either of them -- whether any of them were guilty or innocent. mr. d.a., i am asking you, truly consider leaving the death penalty along. let that be in god's hands, what that person goes through or deals with. there are too many flaws in our system that we cannot control and we cannot trust a man. i am asking you to consider that, to take the consideration of that. the question we did not answer was it one of these guys were in

this and that was executed by a prosecutor that had evidence that was clearly convincing that that person was innocent, what would you do? that was a simple question to me. that was not a tricky question. it was a straight up question dealing with innocence and the prosecutor doing something that was considered murder or attempted murder. you could answer that. you faded around that question, and to me, that is enough to make me think you should consider not dealing with the death penalty and joining in the fight to abolish the death penalty. we went to illinois, and i was with another group. we would go from state to state that have the death penalty and go to legislators and everyone asking them to abolish the death penalty. in the last two years, we have been successful. it appears like we are going to have to put california on our list.

but that is all i wanted to say. that is something that once you take a life, you cannot bring it back. accountability needs to be on your part, too, on the district attorney's part, so if he knew a man was innocent and still prosecuted him, that a straight up murder -- that is straight up murder. that is not malfeasance. [applause] >> i want to thank the public defender's office for putting this panel together. i understand there was a good panel this morning. these are issues that are conflicts, and they require continuing dialogue. the law is not perfect. the law is always evolving. it was an honor also to be with the other panelists here.

i think that the issue of the death penalty is one that obviously is right -- ripe for us to bring this back to the voters. i think there is a great deal of evidence today that speaks to the problems of wrongful convictions. i think we all understand what the factors are. we know there is a problem with wrongful convictions -- convictions. there is certainly a problem with prisoner treatment, and there is a problem with closure to the victims as well as the financial costs. it is up to all of us collectively to talk about how we deal with this and create a more profitable policy around dealing with very serious crimes, and i welcome the opportunity for having been here today. thank you very much. [applause] >> jeff adacci has a few closing

remarks. >> i am a public defender. >> good afternoon. i am with the d a's office. >> in closing today's program, we want to first of all thank all of you for being here and being part of this discussion. no doubt, we achieved a great deal. this was not just another talking head conference where people were just here to give a speech. you really heard engaged discussion from this morning all the way up until now. we thank our panelists because they came here with an open heart and an open mind. we are going to talk in a minute about how we are going to move things forward. i want to thank the staff of the public defender's office and the many volunteers who made this

possible. we thank the library staff as well as sfgovtv for their good work here. john came here because we invited him and because he knew that he is making a difference and will continue to make a difference. after serving 14 years on death row and spending 18 years of his life fighting the case, he continued to fight for justice, and he brought his case to the united states supreme court. he received a $40 million jury verdict, and in april, the united states supreme court overturned that, even though in this case, there were three prosecutors who have -- who were found to have intentionally withheld evidence that would have exonerated him.

plus, and this is a great lesson for all of us, it was a prosecutor who was the hero. he stood up and came forward and told everybody what the other two prosecutors did. when he did that, his efforts were rebuked by the district attorney. as a result, he left his job. it tells you that there are heroes everywhere. people are standing up for justice everywhere. we have to reach everyone everywhere every place in order to solve this problem. we do have a plaque to presented -- present to j.t > as a result of everything he has been through, but more importantly, to help him in the future -- present to j.t. as a

result of everything he has been through, but more importantly, for everything he will do in the future. you can support the work he does with a reentry program for persons coming back from prison. so if we could present this to you. [applause] moving forward, our work cannot stop here. i would like to have christine talk about what we are going to be doing moving forward. we have had meetings with district attorney george gascono about doing things differently.

within the police chief, a new district attorney, we have that opportunity -- with a new police chief, a new district attorney, we have that opportunity. i would also like to acknowledge supervisor ross mirkarimi to come up here just for a moment and say hello, and let me have christine close the program. >> good afternoon, everybody. it was a pleasure to listen to the last panel this afternoon. i am the chief of staff for mr. gascon, and i joined him when he moved over to the d.a.'s office. joining the office on his request, because i think we really have a unique perspective, having worked on the defense side and on policy issues, and i can attest that he is undertaking a wholehearted effort to really bring some reform to the criminal justice system on many fronts, this being one of them that we are evaluating. i hope that you as city and

county residents will see in our work that we really take some efforts that will reform. anybody that has participated in the criminal justice system for any length of time knows that it does not work from whatever and will you are looking at it, so the question is how do we make it better? we hope to engage all of you in that. we are starting neighborhood courts, and a lot of efforts that we hope to engage the city and county in supporting us and looking at ways to move away from the over incarceration of people and look at ways to reform their behavior. the efforts we have undertaken when george was appointed to the position -- jeff asked him to come to the public defender's office to have a question and answer session, which he did, and i attended with him. we are told that was the first time that had ever happened, and we reciprocated by asking jeff to meet with the district attorneys in our office. we have begun a dialogue that both sides think is very

healthy. we have identified a number of issues that we think require further exploration, so we are creating working group's staff by the people from the d.a.'s office and the public defender's office to look at improving things like discovery, which is an important issue, making sure that we have reciprocal discovery and that it is transparent and complete. looking at workers from collaborative courts, looking at solutions besides incarceration, dealing with mental health and behavioral health issues, rather than using the jails as a solution to that, and we are also working around juvenile issues to make sure we are doing all we can for those under the age of 18 in our community. those are the efforts we are undertaking. jeff and matt have been a fantastic partners in this. as far as we know, it is a new day in these efforts and really trying to work collaboratively and we hope to have all your

support in doing that. [applause] >> of course, that is not to say that we are not going to fight it out in court because, of course, that is what we do. i would like to briefly introduce ross mirkarimi, who is a supervisor here in the city, and he has been a champion of many criminal justice issues, including prisoner reentry. i also want to thank and acknowledge debra atherton. thank you. supervisor mirkarimi: it is nice to see everybody. jeff is generous. i was not expecting to be up here. i know you have had a productive day. i think that the public defender's summit is something not to be missed and a template for the rest of california and probably the nation to follow.

i am proud of our public defender. i am proud of our criminal justice partners because over the last four years, we have seen a great amount of innovation. jeff and i started the city's first reentry council, and it might be bewildering to you, but before we started it, believe it or not, those stakeholders in the criminal-justice system really very irregularly rarely would come together and talk about ways that we might mitigate, reduce our recidivism rate. great progress has been made, but san francisco still needs to step up its game. i was delighted to hear the conversation that took place here, but no the statistic that for every four people that sanford's is the police department arrests and the da prosecutes, nearly three are repeat offenders -- for every four people that san francisco police department arrests and the da prosecutes -- the d.a.

prosecutes. there is evidence to show that doing everything we can to try to divert some of his life from repeating their offense, but we will have to really vigorously enhance our approach. one way to do that obviously is the collaboration being fostered and demonstrated here today, but it is more than just today. it will have to be every single day, or else california will continue to be building more prisons, and san francisco may not be far behind. thanks. [applause] >> once again, thanks for the flag. [laughter] have a good time. have a good evening. thank you very much. [applause]

>> welcome and good morning. thank you for coming to the 5th annual public defender's summit. less talk. more solutions. i would like to introduce myself. i am patty lee and i was look to introduce my comc. >> good morning. my name is maurice.

one of the interesting things to note is the collaborative came apart from the meetings and get togethers. this is important for stake holders and it works. >> i have a few housekeeping measures. i want everybody to take notice to the emergency exits. we are asking that everybody please sit down if you can because you would be blocking the emergency exit. men's room is on the first floor. it's closed on this floor. we are asking that everybody including our panelist to remember turn off your black berries, pagers and phones.

at this time, i am very honored and proud to introduce jeff adachi. >> thank you very much. and welcome to the 5th annual public defender's juvenile summit. i was thinking this morning. 5 years. maybe we will not need this because we will have justice for youth. until that time, we will continue to meet and talk and create action. this is the theme of today's summit. creating an action plan that will result in the changes that we're talking about today and the innovations we are talking

about today. over the fast 5 years we have the talked about the magic programs. community based organizations was a result of the first juvenile summit 5 years ago. we have also taken up the deplorable conditions that resulted in the moratorium and i am proud to say, for example over the last year, none of our youth have been transferred to the california youth authority. but we have to remember the fight still continues. they are still incarcerating youth at a cost of $230,000 per youth. you could send a youth to 3

years in law school in stan ford and yale. beyond that, every year we have looked to issues of critical importance. not only locally but throughout the nation. 2 years ago, we looked at undocumented youths particularly those from honduras and other countries where a hostile relationship were being deportd and sent back without parental support. so this year, we focus on the problems of guns and violence in our schools. both to and from schools and at schools. we raise this not as an insend

iary issue. but as the headlines read and give the impression that youth themselves are to blame for these incidents that we often hear about involving guns and gun violence. but to recognize as a society, we have done little to decrease the proliferation of guns on our streets. we have done little. it's just like the war to drugs. you know, it seems almost strange toous those words since it's been such a failure. but the same thing we've seen with guns. particularly those of you who work with youth and in the communities, which are plagued

by violence and war fare. what we're seeing is a reflection of what we're seeing in many poverty stricken communities across the country. there are an obligation of those who lead our schools, who and transportation and we cannot ignore the realities of the street, of the community and families. many of the issues that our young people are struggling with each and every day. we are going to be presenting some very, i think, helpful important information. we start with the facts about what we're seeing in san francisco. we're focuses not only on

individuals who are allegeed to have pertraited violence. but who are victimized. we use those words as being 2 polarized entities. many of those are perpetrators themselves. some of the surveys we have done at the youth guidance center. 77 percent believed a gun was necessary for their own protection. that says a lot about our society that a young purpose would feel compelled to carry a gun. to many people they would think of that as outrageous. there was an incident reported by joe tucker about a first

grader who had a gun and brought it to school. we have to question how does that happen? what is the thinking, and again you're talking about a first grader. and what can we do as youth workers? as educators? as parents. as teachers to help insure that our youth don't grow up in a world where that type of behavior becomes the norm. we have an incredible, incredible array of speakers here today. by speakers, i mean individuals who have come here to share their experiences. i want to emphasize this is about community participation.

what that means, community participation, all of you as exerts in what you do in your work working with our young people need to have a voice. so we will have questions, but more importantly solutions is what we're asking for. not speaking but solutions. we're also broadcasting this about 12 times over the next 6 months. so those of you in our viewing audience who would like to participate in the action plan, it simply send an email to us. go to www.dot sfdefender.org. it's also available online. you can submit your action ideas. i promise you, we will look at every action item. we will not be able to cover

everyone's ideas today and incorporate these. again it's www.dot sfpublic defender.org. i also want to emphasize. we have learned it's important and critical to hear from our youth. you will hear from youth panelists on every panel. their input is valuable. and critical to this process because one thing that we've learned. this is not about adults telling young people how to act. this is about, i'm old. but older people listening to younger people to achieve their