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]

>> good morning. it will be the afternoon very soon. i am here today on the hottest day so far this year at o 'connell high school in san francisco. it focuses on our children, our youth, our kids. not only do we want them to keep busy, but in doing that, clearly, i am very lucky because i get to work with wonderful in the smart people that are working collaborative lead to provide all of these programs and make sure that the kids in

richmond's are kept at a high level. they will be very much enriched by the programs that we are putting our back behind and our money behind. i am here today with carlos garcia. thank you for being here. the relationship with the school continues. the work with me as the education adviser, it constantly on a weekly of got every other day basis. letting us know about the programs we are doing, what more we can do. it is a topic i always want to keep in front of me. watching out for the future of our kids, watching out for their safety as well as their continuing harassment in all the programs that we have. along with carlos, we have marie

sue. they are in charge of a lot of the programs that we have centralized and try to match all of the needs of their, making sure we have the best programs possible. she had a lot of announcements to make today. you will see more of this elsewhere. we are not standing on the soggy ground. now that we're doing things smarter, the recreation and parks department is there for us. they are here to make announcements about the summer programs we have had our reflective they are in his attempt to do more in the summer camp program, where more for you to make this city again reached the heights that it always has been how to embrace all of our youth and make all these programs as open as possible.

paul has continued to advise me along with members of the juvenile probation department and other public safety agencies, that a safe city is not only a city that is safe on the streets, but also save in the sense that we have social services and social network programs that offer tremendous opportunities to go all over this city. they are here today to embrace these programs and work with us as closely as all the agencies would. we have community-based agencies. i want to just a knowledge of the advocates. they are here today, they worked with the leaders because one of the programs is something that i personally got involved in. as you know, i tried to make myself available to all of the different groups in the city.

as we started talking about our budget challenges, i invited a lot of the community-based agencies in to talk with me. i had meetings with scores of community agencies have talked about the needs of the city and the youth to pay attention. we have had a relationship with advocates for some time. they were part of the group's that she brought in to see me. we talked very seriously about a generation of kids that are confronted with these new challenges that carlos knows so well. hall of the cities across the state, you won't be able to graduate unless you pass these very basic courses. we were confronted with ninth graders, about 900 of them have already been documented. they have failed grades in

science and math. they will not going to proceed with a new beginning in high- school. they would not graduate at all. the only way you can give those grades past is if you fail in the normal course of business. however recognize many reasons for students not being able to succeed in the normal course of things. the only way you do it is with a makeup course. some thing that we call summer glasses. the summer classes are not when the part of the economic agenda this summer. they have been wiped out with somebody challenges to our school district before that summer glasses or not -- they exist. we took personal testimony of others to heart during one of the critical meetings a month ago. henderson, carlos, from city college, all of this working

together and we talked about where we could work with maria to find the money that would be the underpinning for saving 900 kids and offering them class's to remediation those grades. we did come up with $250,000. we scraped under every rock. it was a personal challenge for me because it was something that i felt given not only the testimony that was given to us, the very sincerity that people wanted to see these kids and give them the opportunity, it resonated with me. i could see 900 kids not having the next generation without the opportunity to get into the jobs that we are creating with some of the other exciting companies, if you are not good

at math and science, you don't graduate with that degree, you're not going to get the jobs that we're working so hard to unleash upon the city. with that vision in mind, it was natural for all of us to work together to scrape up that money had to make a commitment that this summer, was 900 kids will not be lost. we will have the summer class's. we will have them in cooperation with our school district in community college. with all of the agency's behind us working together to say that we will not allow this opportunity to abandon our selves. we found the money. we will have these summer classes and will allow these kids to get that opportunity to read to those grades with the hope that they will have passing grades. it will proceed to the high school of our city can't get the grades that they need to continue on. that was our commitments.

how to emphasize. it begins with having an open door and the very able agencies that we have telling us these stories. it begins with our collaborating to make this happen. how to thank all of the departments here in the school district to make this happen. had to give a thought to these kids. and the people that i want to get good jobs in the city. to live here, survive, and be successful. i looked a safe city and a solid city. these kids will be the generation that take over the success of a great city like san francisco. there are other programs to be announced that will be part of a whole summer. recreation and park has stepped up to another challenge. as the shootings occurred earlier this year and as we were picking up toward some of the

higher homicide numbers that have come down a bit, i took it personally to walk the mission and what they view with supervisors. we listened to them and our community response networks. had we listened carefully to what the recommendations were. one of the ideas that came out of that was that we ought to have a place for kids to really come and get away from some of the pressures of their urban hard street neighborhood and to a place where kids enjoy the wonder of just playing, being themselves, interacting with the other kids that maybe they looked across the street and don't see the full value of friendship and living in the same communities.

to have an opportunity to do that, we look to scrape up as much as we could, and the wonders of that leadership park. the duty of phil's leadership is he will find the time and we will create a special program aimed at at risk youth, and what they call in-risk, youth who have already been visiting our juvenile probation program who do not have to be there if they can turn their lives around. we are focusing on 16 special slots in the month of august, the details of which we will go on in here yet -- we will go on in. we will be working with a

program of exposure to our camps, to the outdoors, and to emphasize that, rather than lead activities that will be negative to our communities, rather suggests leadership opportunities for our environment, four outdoor leadership, for interacting with other kids. but that placement will occur in august, with the help of all the agencies i talked about providing perhaps a brief moment in which they can participate. before that happens, phil will identify additional slots all through the summer that he has worked hard to increase those slots for camp programs throughout the city. he will go into detail about that. i want to thank phil's

leadership, and the old department of rec and park. again, increasing the number of slots more than they have this year. we are on course to exceed that with more than 8800 slots identified and more to come we are making strides in that effort. and then, working with all of the agency is a around these programs, the summer programs, increasing the amount of funding that we have to keep kids active buying in an indirect way. even our representative of the library here today, to talk about some of the free programs they are going to offer aimed at kids, passes to our museums and all the other special tassels that will be available o