john -- john is actually a descendant of the first chief justice of the u.s. supreme court. paulette frankl, "lust for justice," tony serra, and sheldon siegal. so before we take a break, i do have a surprise. a few years ago, i guess six or seven years ago, i met an amazing artist. i was visiting his home. and he had created this wonderful sculpture. i immediately recognized it as being clarence. it turned out that he had created a number of just amazing sculptures of trial lawyers. and he went on to do one of clara fults, the first woman attorney in california and became the leader of the public defender movement. and just by happenstance, he called me and had this idea of encapsulating one of the greatest trial attorneys of our times. so, bill? is he here? this is not a magistrate. [laughing] -- not a magic trick. >> i've never met tony serra, so i have to make use of the internet to get a sense of who he was and the imagery. what clearly came over was his passion for justice. and in some cases almost a rage for justice. and initially when i started the imagery with the clay, i tried to show this passion for justice, this rage. but then i had a conversation with jeff about tony serra. and another element came out, his great heart, his deep generosity, and his respect for those he defended. so i've tried to incorporate both of these things in this piece. and i depicted him as i would see him making his plea to the jury on behalf of his client. i hope tony likes it. [laughing] [applause] >> we knew this would be tremendously embarrassing to tony, because tony, you know, doesn't like to be recognized in any way. but the reason we did this, tony -- and i want to thank the trial lawyers association or the northern california criminal trial lawyers association as well as stuart hanlon. we're going to also have an image of you -- a sculpture of you, in our trial room to help inspire the next generation of attorneys. but this one is yours. [applause] so thank you very much to all of our panelists. we're going to take a five-minute break and then come back with our next p >> the second panel. this panel is going to be incredible. it really is. we have a superstar panel and, of course, a superstar moderator that i'm very honored to introduce, and that's judge lee baxter. and judge lee baxter is retired now from the bench, although you would never know it. and she's enjoying a new career as a photographer, is a great photographer. but during the time that she was on the bench in san francisco, we had the opportunity to try cases in her court. and she was somebody who represented fairness to everyone. and i think some of the ideals that we talked about in the last panel really were embodied by the way that she ran her court. and at the end of the day it was always about making sure that whoever appeared in her court and before the court walked out of there feeling that they had their case heard and their concerns heard. so, again, judge lee baxter, retired from the san francisco superior court bench. [applause] >> thank you for your kind words. i have been away for a while, but i certainly enjoyed my time on the bench, particularly at the hall of justice. i love the community of attorneys there and the community of judges. i'm glad to be back today. i'm also very delighted and honored to be participating in our fabulous panel which i will introduce you to in just a few minutes. before we begin, though, i wanted to say a quick few words about a tony serra story. i don't know if tony is still here or not. he probably is not. but i did want to tell you about this because i think it's important because it embodies something about tony that maybe you don't know. and maybe he'll watch the video of this and hear what i have to say. i was appointed to the bench in 1987, and i was assigned to a misdemeanor trial court, civil, actually. the very first trial, jury trial, that they sent to me was a simple assault misdemeanor case. and when the attorneys -- when i found out who the attorneys were, i was absolutely blown away because i had a district attorney -- it was not a civil case, by the way. i had a district attorney who was very, very inexperienced. i think he had had two jury trials at that point. i had had none. and lo and behold tony serra walks into my court representing the defendant. i couldn't imagine why he was there for a simple misdemeanor assault case, but he was. and i thought, boy, this is just my luck. here i've got this famous tony serra, he's renown, he's in the press all the time, he has had a movie made about him, and i bet he's an arrogant jerk, and i get him. first trial he's going to make me look really bad. and this poor d.a., we're just going to look terrible. well, lo and behold tony serra comes in. he's a wonderful gentleman. he's gracious. he knows i've never tried a case to a jury. he knows that the d.a. has tried two cases to a jury. he guided us through this trial. he put on a fabulous show, as is his want, which was instructional and very, very interesting. he never took advantage of my inexperience or the d.a.'s experience. and by the end of the day when that trial was over -- of course, he won. but nobody on that jury would have ever suspected that i had never tried a case to a jury or that the d.a. had not had any experience, virtually, either. so i have always wanted to thank tony serra for making me look really good my first jury trial. i had thanked him all my life. and i will never forget that trial. [applause] but let's get back to the issues at hand. well, it happened again this morning. when i read "the chronicle." it seems like it's an epidemic, but maybe it just appear that way. of course i'm talking about the many allegations of police officer abuse and misconduct that we have been reading in the papers recently, along with, of course, misconduct by former governors and monetary fund honchos. but i divert. first, i think the first real scandal that broke several months ago was the theft of drugs from the police department drug lab. then we had the raiding of residential hotel rooms without search warrants. these, of course, are all allegations. we had lying on police reports. surveillance camera videos showing officers removing items from hotel rooms other than evidence that they were going to put into their report. we had drug theft by officers. we had the so-called dirty d.u.i.'s, the drunk driving setups. we've had officers selling stolen drugs. and the one that just beats all is the one of setting up a brothel. now, if i saw a movie that included all of these things in a movie, i would think, well, this is not realistic. it just doesn't happen this way. but apparently it does. so today we're going to talk about the ethics of law enforcement, prevent ago boose of power -- preventing abuse of power. i wanted to read to you a letter to the editor that i happened to run across in the chronicle the other day when i was thinking about this panel. i just want to read it to you. it's entitled "betrayal of trust in the san francisco police department." my thoughts were just those of unbelief after reading your story "new video slap for san francisco cops." it is undeniable that our rights under search and seizure laws must be protected. but cops that blow cases by violating these rights should lose their jobs and be prosecuted themselves. i hope new chief greg suhr follows through on his promises to clean up the san francisco police department that betrays the trust put in it when it pulls stunts like this. so, what happens when those we think are protecting us from criminal activity become the criminals themselves? what is the mentality that causes this to happen? how much can a police department overcome such a betrayal of trust, public trust? so we're going to explore some of these issues today with our most imminent panel, all of them experts in their field. and we are very fortunate to have them all here. let me introduce you first to stuart hanlon, at my immediate left. stuart is a defense attorney of great renown. he has over 30 years of experience, including some of the country's most high-profile cases. including cases involving police and official misconduct. next to him is our san francisco police chief, greg suhr, newly appointed to that office last month. congratulations, chief. >> thank you, your honor. [applause] >> chief suhr has surfed in the department for 30 years. and as chief he will be overseeing a department of 1,800 police officers. next we have peter herley who is now acting as police consultant. he is the former chief of police of tiburon and the former president of the california police officers association. next to mr. herley is sharon wu, the chief assistant of operations in the district attorney's office. she oversees the criminal division, including the victim witness program and the alternative dispute courts. anne irwin is an attorney in the public defender's office. ms. irwin was recently involved in several of the cases involving the videotaped evidence which resulted in the dismissal of over 90 cases. you've read about those in the newspaper. and finally, we have civil rights attorney john burress. he specializes in civil actions brought against police officers for abuse of power, brutality, and wrongful death. let me remind the audience that we will have a brief q&a at the end. if you want to ask a question, just raise your hand. you'll get a card from the usher. and you can ask your question. and if you would like to address it to a particular panel member, you can do that as. i believe we are going to have a video now. it is movie time. >> this was recorded on a cellular phone by a witness who did not want to be identified. he was pulled on to the ground, face down. there was a struggle. the officers were neck and neck. those of few feet away watched it all happened. >> this is putting cases in jeopardy. >> she is a longtime employee now suspended. she was supposed to be watching over evidence. tonight, and narcotics cop is being accused of selling drugs. the workbooks in it -- they were booked in martinez this morning. >> norman wells was a very high- ranking narcot