that was gideon's story. he knew he had a right that was taken way from him and he fought to get it back. >> if you are wondering how it is they had a televised proceeding of the gideon trial they reenacted it on television and they had gideon and the judges play themselves. now i would like to you meet chris kearney, he's of the bar association of san francisco and a litigation partner which represents lawyers and accountants. he also represented a friend of mine. i will always be grateful for your work. our justice summit has been made possible by the bar association in san francisco. please join me in welcoming chris to the stage. >> thank you, jeff and great to see so many people here today. as jeff said i'm a partner at van ness and happy to the the president of the bar association this year. it's great to be here on this particular day with a great group of panelist talking about a very important subject. we are also proud at the bar association to partner with jeff's office to represent indigent client

that was gideon's story. he knew he had a right that was taken way from him and he fought to get it back. >> if you are wondering how it is they had a televised proceeding of the gideon trial they reenacted it on television and they had gideon and the judges play themselves. now i would like to you meet chris kearney, he's of the bar association of san francisco and a litigation partner which

this summit focused on the an verseey e anniversary of the gideon case. a promise and excitement following the united states supreme court decision has been a road trip marked by stoplight and heavy traffic. it was gideon's mutual trumpet, the new book that talks about the harsh reality of the system where public defenders have to handle thousands of cases in a course of a year. that's a tough reality whether it's 500 or a thousand cases. something that jim had an eye to handle more business litigation could not imagine handling and handling well. that's why this anniversary and events like this are so important. they remind us why court funding and why funding of public defenders is so critical and invite vital. these days there is too much worry about funding the judicial system and not enough worry about the cost for equal justice. this is the 50th anniversary of gideon, more articles are written, more gatherings like this and more than any that i can remember. maybe in california armed with a great public defender and with a like minded d.a., maybe we

gideon's promise they get together every six months. i went to all of those and in between those trips i went to visit the individual lawyers. i thought if i can show people what their -- because i kept wanting to answer the questions why could anybody do this job. i wanted to turn that around and say how can you represent that people from the perspective of the people doing the work and what was motivating them and i thought it was to tell it through their eyes and show why they get so emotionally invested. the thing i would say is when you make a film, it can be very lonely you are by yourself with an editor and doing what you think you should do. so seeing with an audience what has been the most gratifying is people are rooting for the clients and in every screening somebody will stand up and say, it's young people and they will say, at sundance this kid stood up and he said i'm a public defender and people said yay! and that doesn't usually happens. the reaction is getting this idea of why someone would want to do this job and young

gideon's promise. i never heard about it. now i just listen and looking at the movie, that's something i did because many times i sat in my cell and i just wrote somebody to try to hear my cry for help and i finally got it. like i say, fate brought me here. now my hope has been restored to this innocent project. you know what i'm saying? [ applause ] >> thank you. linda, you have seen story after story simil

promise justice for all where clarence combid gideon convicted to be stealing change at a pool hall. he wrote a petition to the supreme court from his jail cell arguing that his rights had been violated. he presented a victory for civil rights and justice. san francisco one of the first cities in the united states to establish a public defenders office opened it's doors in 1921. whereas gideon's promise lives on in the san francisco public defenders office which service 25,000 indigent people every year. whereas city of the san francisco joined with the public defenders and the legal aid lawyers to celebrate the right to counsel. therefore be it resolved the san francisco -- march 18th as gideon versus wayne right day as acknowledgment for the 50 years of the united states landmark decision as well as the work of the public defenders who continue to fulfill the rights. [ applause ] >> thank you very much. i would like to thank the board of supervisors and the mayor's office as well. i would like to share with the public defenders. ken is here and as well as dave from the public defen

gideon's promise. i never heard about it. now i just listen and looking at the movie, that's something i did because many times i sat in my cell and i just wrote somebody to try to hear my cry for help and i finally got it. like i say, fate brought me here. now my hope has been restored to this innocent project. you know what i'm saying? [ applause ] >> thank you. linda, you have seen story after story similar to maurice's, what are common thread do you see and what can be done to reduce wrongful convictions? >> there are several causes of wrongful convictions and almost always in every case it's a constant variety of causes, that would be that case and in maurice's case as well. he had an effective attorney. he was not a public defender and has since been disbarred. it was his only criminal case. he shouldn't have taken the case to begin with. it's with the help of the public defenders office that initial help with jeff's office that we were able to get the case over turned ultimately. but as maurice said about his case, i w

>> john: "gideon's army." we've all seen in detective shows throughout our childhood you have the right to an attorney. >> right. >> john: and, of course, that's only about 50 years old, that right. >> it's exactly 50 years old. >> john: so gideon's army is based on the supreme court case. >> "gideon v. wayne wright" is the supreme court case that established you have a right to an attorney in a criminal case. before that you didn't have that right, which most people don't know. >> john: and at that point you were (bleep) out of luck. (laughter) >> that's right! >> john: in a judicial sense you were (bleep) out of luck. >> they didn't call it that but -- >> john: but they definitely implied it. so this documentary shows some of the public defenders working in the south on absolutely the sharp end of justice and it is easy not to care about this. it's easy not to care about defenders and defendants. they're not politically seufrp thet nick general, lawyers and defendants. but this affects all of us if we come i

years after gideon. what i would like to do is read a little section of the book first and talk for a few minutes and read a brief section. so, the section i'm going to read is in the conclusion because it's about public defenders in a conference i went to with public defenders since i thought there were probably quite a few of you in the audience, you might find it musing. i don't know. the national defenders association opened the conference in washington dc in 2011 addressed the crowd of 300 public defenders with a room with space for many more. does society demonize you? of course. do they suggest you are working for the wrong people? of course they do do they suggest you are work for thugs? of course they do but the work do you is vital and critical because it's rest to get justice on our legal system. his voice rose in volume and picked up speed and told the audience they ought to consider themselves as super heroes. it was an interesting observation. the public defenders and attorneys sprinkled in

you'll let me again ask karen, you spent the last year-and-a-half studying and observing how gideon's promise have been broken. what do you think is an obstacle to closing the gap between rich and poor people's justice. what have we learned about the solution? >> well, i think the biggest obstacle to closing this gap is the political desire to do so which is kind of -- i talked about that a little bit in my talk. but i think that, you know, and you can learn this lesson in many ways. i don't know when you go to work, i have to learn the same lessons over and over and they are a big epiphany for me each time t epiphany i had while i was working on this book i'm a journalist and i'm a generalist. i was really drowning in it for the first six months when i was reporting. i didn't know what was going on in court, i didn't know the language, i didn't know the process. it was all very complicated. and then i had my little epiphany which was that actually i shaolin to that little voice and realize what the clients were experienced going through this system and it was disorienting and they do

. >> what do you think it's going to take to make society in government to take the step towards gideon and it's what we've talked about. you have worked on this for many years? >> and the bar association that is represented today. i think we are proud of our city, whatever city might be here today. we are all proud of our city. i like this city because we get ideas here that nobody else gets. some of them are really bad. we are all friends here. right? so, our little committee, we are powerless in this culture. forget about it. we have no cloud. so our slogan is, we don't think, we do. because we don't want to study things. there are people out there studying things. so we want to a supervisor. david chu, in this city, we said here is the problem and he said that is terrible. he's a practicing lawyer and we went for the finances committee for 13 unlawful detainer actions had been moved because of the cuts in the budget done by our legislators. they have been moved out of the county to santa monica. 9 out of 10 who are defending trying to keep their house, 9 out of 10 have no lawyers. o

why, obviously we're at 50 years after gideon, but why this film now? making the film after meeting a mentor and trainer in atlanta. so i actually started making the film not thinking about the gideon anniversary. so it's a really happy accident but it's a perfect one because i think people are now talking about the fact that america, as you mentioned, arrests more people, imprisons more people, we're definitely number one in the world with 2.3 people in prison, 80% of people who go through the criminal justice system are represented by public defenders yet very few people know what they do. >> not only don't know. to the extent they do know, obvious have a derogatory image of public defenders, they are bad lawyers, couldn't get another job, don't do a good job for their clients. >> i think that's a common miss perception. i was a lawyer. i was in private practice in washington, d.c. i didn't know what public defenders do. i think of myself as a socially aware, conscious person. when i saw these young lawyers talking about the constitution and people's

so, i'm going to take another question from gideon, gideon cramer, former member of the san francisco graffiti advisory board. and let's hear what you have to ask. >> this is a follow-up question for larry. we were talking about concrete sidewalk graffiti and curbs. and your response was that that is private property or the owner -- the property owner is responsible. a number of my neighbors had asked me when they had graffiti said where do we go? technically you're responsible. so, what am i going to do? they ended up -- i said, do not paint over it. it's got to be power washed. you have to use -- that can be really expensive. they went and painted over it. and now it looks worse than the graffiti. i see it all over the city that a tag is painted over with brown paint, with whatever is available. and then it becomes a real problem because it's really hard to remove it then. so, i think that -- my thought about it, i know dpw doesn't have the financial resources, but realistically i think sidewalks even though they're kind of that nebulous gray area where technically they're owned by

. >> he's in hayward and i'm going to come over to gideon unless anybody else there has a response to this. gideon if you'd like to stand up. >> i'd like to ask about, there are three pernicious forms of graffiti that in some ways have actually gotten worse. as the city of san francisco has greatly improved the graffiti situation, i've noticed that there's more graffiti on concrete, on sidewalks, on curbs and also on trees, tree trunks. and tree trunks, graffiti on trees to me is the lowest form of graffiti that there is because it just -- it is so lacking in any consciousness about the environment and life and so forth. so, i'm wondering when i was in a graffiti advisory board, several of us tried to get some special attention paid to those things as well as glass etching. i don't know if glass etching has gotten worse or not, but particularly graffiti on concrete sidewalks and curbses and trees. i'm wondering if perhaps officer parerra [speaker not understood] can speak to that if any special efforts are made to address those. >> i'll speak to it. when we invoked the blight ordinanc