REDWOOD CITY — A Bay Area-based civil rights group that recently alleged the San Mateo County Superior Court was ignoring a state Supreme Court decision governing bail for criminal defendants unexpectedly found themselves in the crosshairs of a cadre of unhappy attorneys.
But it wasn’t prosecutors or judges grumbling. It was a group of criminal-defense attorneys contracted with the county’s Private Defender Program tasked with providing counsel for indigent defendants.
Through the leak of a thread of messages shared among attorneys in an official PDP email listserv, members of Silicon Valley De-Bug discovered that several lawyers they often interacted with while advocating for poor people described them as “f—ers,” “scum bags,” and “not to be trusted.”
In one exchange, apparently meant to be a one-on-one communication that got shared with the larger group, one attorney joked about “packing heat” when referencing a prospective meeting.
De-Bug co-founder Raj Jayadev called it a low point among the criticism he had heard in two decades of work. Jayadev received a 2018 MacArthur “genius grant” for pioneering the “participatory defense” model credited with helping people achieve better court outcomes earlier on in their cases.
“I have never seen anything so vile, so disgusting, and blatantly racist,” Jayadev wrote in an email disclosing the situation to the county Board of Supervisors, emphasizing his group’s clientele is almost entirely Black people and people of color.
After Jayadev raised the issue with the board, the Bay Area News Group independently confirmed the content of the messages.
The comments in the late-August message thread were prompted by a news article about a judicial complaint filed by De-Bug and the Civil Rights Corps. The complaint asked the county’s presiding judge to investigate claims that court commissioners were routinely defying the state Supreme Court’s 2021 Humphrey ruling, aimed at increasing access to affordable bail and more non-jail alternatives.
While the focus of the complaint was directed at the judiciary, a portion of the document raised questions about whether PDP attorneys were zealously representing their clients and compounding the situation. Those remarks drew the ire of attorneys in the thread.
By and large, the thread voiced a feeling of betrayal toward De-Bug, which the attorneys wrote neither understood nor appreciated the hard work they performed on behalf of indigent clients. They also asserted that the organization was bent on dismantling the PDP structure, which uniquely operates in place of a public defender’s office in other comparably sized counties.
One attorney cited Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky in his comments. Another talked about tactically making bail arguments — to avoid the wrath of judges — that supported their clients but still received criticism from De-Bug.
Others in the thread were even stronger in their criticism. One attorney wrote, “f— those f—ers” while describing how obvious his aggressive representation of clients was in court.
Another, Connie O’Brien, challenged De-Bug’s legitimacy and called its members “reprehensible scum bags.” O’Brien has also been confirmed to have shared a private message with attorney Jeffrey Hayden in which Hayden, while mentioning a hypothetical “listening session” with the group, wrote, “I’ll be packing heat.”
In the aftermath of the thread being leaked, PDP Chief Defender Lisa Maguire wrote to the Board of Supervisors that O’Brien had resigned from the program. O’Brien did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Maguire has vigorously defended Hayden, telling the board that Hayden was “mortified” that his message with O’Brien was shared more widely, and that he immediately offered to apologize for making a “very bad joke.” Hayden also did not respond to requests for comment.
Both in the thread and to the board, Maguire apologized and tried to bring the temperature down on the situation, sympathizing with the attorneys’ frustration but also seeking to recognize the advocacy role that De-Bug performs. She called for more “appreciation” and “direct communication” between the two.
“Both organizations are seeking to bring justice to underserved communities and it is disappointing that this incident will continue to increase the divide and lack of trust between the groups,” Maguire wrote. “We must and will do better.”
The apologies haven’t landed with De-Bug members, who saw the leak as a glimpse into a larger disdain that they believe is undeserved. Lourdes Best, a San Mateo County-based organizer, said she was hurt and insulted by the notion that their interests were separate from their clients — people who have little familiarity with the court process and even less access to money and resources, including attorneys.
“All we’re doing is helping people get representation,” Best said. “I don’t understand what is so wrong about asking (attorneys) to do a little bit more for our families.
“Why am I a ‘scumbag’ for doing something like that?” she added. “It’s scary to fathom the level of hatred that was cast at us.”
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Jayadev echoed the sentiment, arguing that because his group includes community members ensnared in the court system, the attacks by the attorneys were against their own clients.
“I think it’s completely indefensible,” Jayadev said in an interview. “There are some questions of basic character. If this feels like, ‘Hey, these are just lawyers having fun on email and they’re embarrassed it got out.’ That’s not the response of true accountability.”
Jayadev has called on the board to formally denounce the messages and compel disciplinary action toward those who participated in them. It would have to be the first step, he said, in establishing a path forward.
“Their letter of saying ‘We could all work together,’ hopefully that can happen. But there has to be some deeper accountability than ‘Hey, he was just joking, and we’re going to have more discretion on emails,’ ” he said.
